Charles Claymore Task, a man who has been labeled a psychopath by hypocrites who see themselves as “normal,” is asked by a group of wealthy investors to detail for a film crew what makes people like him tick. At least that was the initial plan.
Charlie can speak honestly only to what made him who he is, so he uses the opportunity to offer an autobiography of his first 32 years. From a few months after his birth through his early childhood, Charlie describes the abandonment, disillusionment, and betrayals that created him.
Subjected to unimagineable cruelties by his father, he paradoxically learned not to subject others to the same cruelties. Also paradoxically, that subjugation instilled within Charlie a deep, abiding sense of right and wrong and a hatred for anyone who would harm others, especially children.
It also irrevocably molded his personality into one that is ideally suited for a public service he calls Blight Removal and a profession as a freelance hit artist.
In addition to illustrating how he became who and what he is, Charlie provides examples of Blight Removal and his chosen profession. If you enjoy a fast-paced, heart-racing reading experience combined with an exploration of a skewed human mind, this is the book for you.
Search Tags: psychological suspense, psychopath, murder, torture, child abuse, thriller, betrayal, abandonment, misanthropy
Below is an excerpt from the beginning of Confessions of a Professional Psychopath.
To sample the novel further or to purchase it in any ebook format, visit Smashwords. It will be available soon at Amazon, Apple and Barnes & Noble.
To purchase the paperback edtition (available soon), please visit either CreateSpace or Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
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an excerpt from Confessions of a Professional Psychopath
The revolver bucked in my hand, jerking itself away from the old man’s head.
For an instant I saw the indentation of the end of the barrel on his skin through the hair.
For an instant I thought of the few hairs that were pressing up into the barrel. They individually probably were as evil as he was. In a split instant they would be burned, compressed, shoved through his head and out through his face.
A line crawled across my mind.
I said it quietly. “The force that through the foul head drives the bullet….”
A murderous mimicry of the title and first line of the famous Dylan Thomas poem. A smile tugged at the corner of my mouth.
Then the bullet exited the end of the barrel.
The vortex formed, erasing the indentation. The hairs, the fledgling poem and my smile were sucked into a black and red hole.
Hot bits of skin and blood slapped the glove on my right hand and my face.
The aromas of cordite and copper mixed with the smell of musty old carpet and began to permeate the air.
A thin film of blue smoke wafted from the hole.
And he moved.
An overwhelming, trembling fear shuddered through me.
With all the strength in my right hand and forearm I arrested the recoil, dragged the revolver back down from the apex and leveled it again.
He was going to leap from the chair and start wailing on me with that goddamned belt.
But he hadn’t moved.
Not of his own accord.
His head had snapped forward, jerked back hard, then dropped forward again as he slumped in the chair.
I released a breath.
It was done. It was over.
So quick. So easy.
It was over.
The revolver still in my right hand but dangling, I stepped cautiously to the left around the chair. I wanted to go to the kitchen, get a dishrag, wipe my face and hands and maybe my chest.
As I started past the chair, I glanced back to my right, still half-expecting the old man to get up, rip off his belt and start wailing on me.
If the monster attacked me again I’d shoot him in the goddamn throat. At least I wouldn’t have to listen to all the bullshit.
Then something odd caught my attention and I stopped. I turned and looked.
My father’s head had lolled forward and to the left. His grey-green glasses were canted to the left on his nose, the left lens lower than the right. A thin trail of blood had seeped from under the left lens down over his cheek. It was a very small amount of blood. It was thick.
And why were the glasses canted?
I frowned and started to lean closer, but then my eyes focused just beyond the lens and the images came in a rush and in perfect order.
First there was the top of the frame of the glasses.
A thin arc of grey-green lens.
A wet smudge where something had hit and slid down.
A grey-green masked white orb. It was flat, a soft white thumb pressed against a window pane.
Then the dark bronze frame.
Then the dark blood running in a thin stream down his cheek. That stream contained all the compassion he should have felt, all the love he should have shared, all the tears he should have shed while he was able.
Bastard.
The images converged in a rush.
My father’s left eye had been shoved out of his head. It had struck the inside of the left lens of his glasses with just enough force to push them down his nose a little. It had stuck to the lens, then slipped down. It had come to rest on his cheek, the cornea and pupil on the bottom. What had been the top of his eye was pressed against the bottom of the left lens of his glasses.
That soft white thumb.
For a moment, I couldn’t look away.
It was fascinating, and I had heard about such things before. It had something to do with physics and force and pressure. Something about the sudden introduction of the bullet into the cranial cavity, increasing the pressure so much that it blew out the eyes.
Eyes. Plural. He had two of them.
I shifted my attention to the right eye.
I put my left hand on the armrest of the chair to steady myself and leaned farther, my head almost above my father’s stomach.
The stench was palpable. The cordite and copper and musty carpet was still there around the edges, but there was something much worse.
The old man had involuntarily voided his bowels.
I’d known he was going to do that, hadn’t I? Hadn’t I read somewhere that’s one of the last things that happens when a person dies?
And in the bottom of my peripheral vision there was a spreading dark blue stain on his Levis. In a final irony, he was pissing himself. Maybe it was appropriate that I should cause that after all the beatings I’d taken for wetting the bed. Add another strong smell, but there was no sound. Shouldn’t there have been a little hissing sound or something as it left his body?
Then I realized there had been no sound when he’d messed himself either.
Maybe death silences things like that.
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