Everyone, Kill Adam West
Flash Fiction / Pulp Fiction
No, not that Adam West.
This Adam West.
To Adam West’s neighbors, he was a simple, unassuming man.
His hair was a mousey sort of brown and he wore unfashionable wire-rimmed glasses. Adam West was neither tall nor short, fat nor thin, old nor young, handsome nor ugly.
He always dressed in the same wrinkled suit to his office job in the city, read paperback biographies on his commute, and drank black coffee. At the apartment building’s Christmas party, he repeated one too many Office lines and knocked back more eggnog than he should, (though it was less than everybody else). The ladies found him dull and his male counterparts often forgot he existed.
By all standards, Adam West was the most boring person on planet Earth.
How wrong that assumption was.
Adam West worked by day, but he lived by night.
Adam West smoked Sobranie Black Russians and rinsed it with gin so dry it would shrink your best sweater. The glasses he wore were as fake as Clark Kent’s. In fact, his vision was a perfect 20/20.
Under his mattress, he kept a Sig Sauer and about 200,000 units of that cold hard American cash, baby. It just so happened that on the evening of January 4th, 2024; Adam West was pretending to be asleep on this exact mattress.
Why you ask?
Because Adam West was not alone.
Of course, he wasn’t having fun. Tonight’s company were bad guests. They did not knock nor wipe their feet on the carefully laid doormat.
Naughty things.
Some came in through the window, others through the unlocked door.
What kind of fool leaves the door unlocked? they laughed to themselves.
They crept, they crawled, they sprayed for motion sensor lazers, and they checked for wires. More entered: fifteen, then thirty, now sixty. Uninvited guests took their places along the hallway, they exchanged confused looks past balaclavas, and they sniffed in annoyance.
Why were there so many?
They should’ve known then.
The door to the bedroom cracked ajar and a single thread of light unspooled upon the bed where Adam West lay.
Of the three on the threshold, only one dared approach. He raised his gun and entered silencer first.
This was their first mistake.
The second mistake was holstering the firearm in favor of a rather nasty-looking dagger. He wanted to look Adam West in the eye for a proper hello and goodbye; to greet the host. How polite.
He didn’t expect a handshake.
Before his heart had another chance to beat, Adam West pressed the cool barrel of his sig beneath the man’s chin. He smiled a wild sort of smile—the kind that a local wacko offers before he pulls down his pants and soils a bus stop bench.
Adam West pulled the trigger.
I’m pleased I allowed myself to be bullied into writing this by
. This was crazy fun to write.Side note: I feel like I’ve played a practical joke on myself by choosing the name Adam West. I had no clue that he was already a well-known character from Family Guy.
I hope you enjoyed!
-M.E. Beckley
I thought Adam West was Batman?
I definitely thought Adam West being the name of the man who played 1960’s Batman was part of the joke! 😂 HOWEVER this was awesome and perfectly done! Very glad you brought this to life!