"Yes, I must admit it. I like the sounds of a woman's screams. Turns me on like a motherf---er. But what I really like is the smell, the scent of her fear. And the scent coming from my own body, of course. Especially when I warm up to hitting her. God, that makes me so f---ing hot. F---ing doctor says its an acquired taste. Like he'd really f---ing know. Anyway, that screaming. Screaming cause she still has hope, ya know? Hope she's gonna f---ing make it through. But she ain't. She just ain't smart enough to figure that out. And I don't want her to. Cause when she knows she's gonna die -- Just right after I f--- her like she's a bedsheet, she's gonna die, then she goes all soft on me. Bitch! I hate it when they whimper. Cause when they start to whimper? That's when they know. They know they'e gonna die. And that knowing? It takes the fun right out of it. Take that bitch from the Lucky Lady. Now, see, that c--t caught on right real fast that she weren't long fer this world. Her husband playing the table like some f---ing wannabe high-roller, and me trolling the halls like a motherf---er, just looking for a loose door. Yeah . . ."

--Stephen Allen Cheney--

In the 1960's, Stephen made Vegas his home. Made it his personal playground. And, boy, did he know how to play. Loved the girls. But the girls? Well, they didn't love him. Which pissed him off. Stephen's last victim was 17 year old Janet L. Seabromme, from Payette, Oregon. When they found Miss Seabromme, she'd been viscerated. Both arms had been torn from her body. A towel soaked in her own blood was shoved [halfway down her swollen] throat. And, Stephen, when interviewed, said that all he wanted was to take Miss Seabromme to dinner. "To a F---ing buffet! I just wanted to by the bitch something good to eat -- and then get myself some of that good pussy! Just f--- that good pussy! F--k it till she quits bleeding, just like mamma says . . . And see what you get when you f--k with me . . . She f---ed with me! And I just wanted to tell her, Welcome to Vegas. Welcome to F---ing Vegas. Dat's all I wanted to tell her . . ."

Yeah. Well, welcome to Vegas, Baby. We got a long bumpy ride ahead of us. Damned straight we do. We gonna meet up with gangsters. Gamblers. Pimps. Cutthroats. Cheats. Whores. Prostitutes. Drunks and druggies. And entertainers -- (and these people can be really f---ing scary! Some of the scariest people you will ever meet, in fact.) We gonna rub shoulders with Mormon Elders. Kit Carson. Jim Bridger. Johnnie Tycre (Who in the 1950's, showed a still innocent Las Vegas just how 'wet' a mass-murderer can get.) Oh, yes. Oh, fucking yeah!

So hang on, boys and girls. Hang on with both hands cause we're gonna fly. Yes, we sure are. We're gonna go beyond sickness and perversion. Shit, yeah. Cause we're going to Vegas, Baby! Las Vegas, Nevada! Good old Glitter Gulch. Yowser! Yowser! Yowser! So settle yourself in for some real tales of yesterday and today. Cause we going Die-Die! Tick-Tick Tick-Tock. "You mothers just ain't listening to the beat of my cock! And you gonna pay for that. You really gone pay for that!" (James Arthur Edwards (1972) -- just before he opened up in a branch of the Nevada State Bank, killing 4, wounding 3.)

Yup. Next time we meet, we're gonna set up the landscape, the backdrop of our tales, if you will. And our backdrop, it ain't the casinos and wedding chapels, the bright neons and skin-tone nylons. Fuck no. Our backdrop is the desert . . Is the desert. The big, beautiful, magnificently wonderful desert, which . . . well, since Unshaped gave way to Shaped, has been attracting people here to what is now called Las Vegas. Yes, the desert is bringing people here. Bringing them here to play. And to be fed upon. And if it isn't the desert which is bringing them here, then it is most certainly the Spirit which dwells out there upon the desert. And for that Spirit, which just loves to play with human lives and needs, humans are . . well, food of sorts. Are what satiates its hunger; are what drives it on, giving it a reason to live, to rejoice in its life. A life which is about . . . brutality. And murder. And rape. And duplicities of all kinds. Infidelities. Armed Robberies. Scams and cons . . . All the stuff of which Vegas is made. Oh, yes, and Insanity. Let's not forget insanity. . . Nope. Because here, the desert makes you sick. Really sick. And this sickness, it ain't no accident. Hell no. And even in the 1860's, miners were talking about "that which lives beneath the dirt and the mountains, and rides on the dust like it is some kind of stallion out of Hell." Yup. And them same miners, and later the settlers, tell tales of violence, of murder and carnage, hard for us, today, to imagine or believe. But what is even harder for us to believe is the reason they advanced for their "Deviltry." They said, "The desert talked to me. It sang in my ear. The desert . . it's alive!"

Well, that all sounded just as crazy to me as it did to you. So, until next time, then. This is your old friend, The Dark Prince, saying come and see me in Vegas, Baby! . . . So I can show you what real pleasure feels like . . . And we're talking about my pleasure here. Not yours!

How are you world? Have you missed me. Didn't think you had. What, have I thought about you? Oh, sure I have. Thought about you like a drunk thinks about his next drink -- or like a sexual predator thinks about his next victim. Anyway, I've been thinking. And that's not a good sign. No, because whenever I think, bad things happen to good people -- which is precisely what is supposed to happen, and yet . . .

My mind is seizing upon an idea for a new blog. A blog about Evil. Human evil. This blog -- most of it -- will be set here in Las Vegas, for it is here that people come to play, have fun, and truly be themselves. This blog will be about Las Vegas, the games we play here. The games we play in the casinos. The games played elsewhere, like on the desert, for instance. (And if you listen very carefully, you can hear the gunshots. You can hear her scream! I love the sound of screams. I love the sight, the fragrance of dying. Death. Oh, I can just suck it up. Yes, can't you smell that smell -- it makes me want to fuck, rip and tear at her most delicate flesh until . . . Well, that's for later.)

The desert, that will be part of this, my new blog -- for the desert here is alive. Very much alive.

Ah, and the history of Vegas. We can't ignore that. The Paiute Indians, who once treated these grounds as sacred. (Yeah, imagine that. Sacred! Can you fucking believe that?! Talk about savages.) There are the atomic tests of the 1950's. There's the stories from the fifties and sixties, too. The Rat Pack. The mob -- and these stories continue on into the sixties, seventies, even into the eighties. Oh, the stories.

But, mostly, our stories are going to be about people. About the things they do here -- do to one another. Do to themselves. These are going to be some sick stories, readers. No humor this time. No fun stuff, unless your idea of fun is a 13 year old girl leaking out her life in a bus station toilet. (Oh, yes. I collect stories like this. Collect them like a fiend, you might say. And I know a million of them -- want to know what happened to her momma and daddy? (You wanta know where they both were while she was puking and bleeding out?!) I just bet you would. (And I just bet what you'd really love to know is which tight little orifice she was a'doing most of that bleeding from, huh?) I just bet! you fucking would. And I'm gonna tell you. I'm gonna tell you because you're a bunch of sick fucks, just like the players who come here to . . . throw their lives away. Correction: To throw what remains of their lives away. Because by the time most of them get here, I already own their lives. And what they do here, it just seals the deal. Or damns the deal, take you pick!)

Oh, and there won't be no God this time. No Boo-Boo Baby. No Jesus. And no fucking hope. Definitely no hope. Nope. Because this time, we're dealing with reality. Strictly with reality. And reality? Why, it ain't got no fucking hope! Cause I see to that.

But the stories will have me -- The Dark Prince. Only this time around, I won't be the star of the show. Nope. All I'll be doing is setting the story up. Adding maybe a moral or two, here and there. And providing the necessary exposition. Shit like that. Yup. The people, the people's pain, their dreams and delusions, the city, the desert, human depravity and wickedness -- these are gonna be the stuff my stories will be made of. Good stuff, this. Good and sick. So come one, come all. Come and watch the light fade and fall. Come one, come on, cause in this, the pages torn right out of the flesh of The Dark Prince, will be all them stories Vegas was never gonna tell you. Stories that were never gonna ever get themselves told -- until now.

Ah, the horror! Don't you love it . . . Don't! You! Just! Fucking! Love! It!

I know you do. So you all come back. And you bring strong stomachs with you, hear? Yeah. And don't come late at night. Not to these pages.