Hello, all. I think I should go on record here, say a few words about David Burton Steiner, note how this story got started. And maybe even do my part to advance the story, while I am at it. Okay, so here goes.

David came to me while I was doing my act. He was impressed by the various hats I wear here: God, Anti-Christ, Jesus, Etc. And David had also noted that . . . well, I get around a lot. I am invited to a lot of parties with the right kinds of people. People who like to talk (especially when they're high -- and who isn't high, here), people who know what Vegas is really all about. My kinds of people, in other words.

So David, he came to me with these pictures of his dad and his sister, right. Like, his dad is career Air Force, is you can dig the type. I can't. But, anyway. Ah, and then there was his sister's picture. Valerie is her name; it's a plain, common name. But the girl is something else. Striking. Big dark, doe eyes. Long hair, that is neither quite brown nor quite black. A gorgeous smile. Pert nose. Yeah. And she's young. In all, she's the kind of girl you want to screw before somebody else gets his hands on her and screws her up, if you know what I mean. And, hey, for the record, I ain't advocating sex with minors: I'm just stating a fact. Girl turns 14, she starts hating herself and the whole fucking world. And I ain't pointing no fingers, just stating the facts. (Yeah, hey, we all know somebody's busting on these young girls. Badges say its the daddies, the uncles, the cousins. But who really knows, right? And who really cares? I mean, fuck, life is just a hard road, and then you get caught up in a major train wreck. And so fucking what? I mean, maybe as how, daddy pays the bills, so daddy decides to enjoy the thrills, know what I'm talking about? Shit, it ain't no thing. Ain't no shame, right?)

So I like em young. Like em before they start getting fat and wrinkled. (And they start getting fat about the time they start learning how to drive. As for the wrinkles? All them diets, them crying jags, and all that booze and them sleeping pills, they's account for most of them wrinkles.) And I like em while the body is still worth having. Cause I got a saying: If you want the body, you got to take the head. But who wants to screw a beautiful body if it comes attached to a really screwed up head, know what I mean?

(Hey, check this out: Most of the people come here? They're hard as gun steel, I shit you not. Their women? Hard, too. But their kids, their daughters? All soft and ripe, know what I'm saying? It's like daddy and mommy brought them chickies here for a reason -- yeah, you lose on the tables, right, or you just need some yards to LOSE on the tables, and them chickies will see ya into the game, if you know what I'm talking about. And if ya's played here, you do know what I'm talking about. Yeah, sure. It happens every day here. And nobody talks about it, right. Cause what happens here stays here. Yeah, so now you know another - know the main -- reason I like playing Vegas, baby!)

Anyway, Valerie had good looks. And from the way she smiled in her picture, I figured her head was still pretty much together. So, and out of panty lust, I agreed to help the boy locate his kin. And towards that goal, I did some talking, asking around, you know. Did anybody know Val and her dad, know what kind of shit the old man might have gotten his ass into while he was here. But, so far, nobody's spoken wise. Which is cool, ya know? Cause this ain't a town where everybody gives wind, even when the know you.

But this has been factored in: People, they talk, whisper really, about the shit that goes down here, ya know? I mean, nobody talks about the demon on the desert, but nobody is uncool, either. We all know what this town is about: The violence, the people who go missing all the time, that kind of shit. And people do get missing a lot, here. And not just the tourists, which might make some sense. No, even the locals go lost. Go lost pretty regular, like. So, anyway, a lot of murders here. And all those murders can't be tossed off to the gambling and the sex. Nope. And for a long time, folks figured the wrong kind of people get attracted to this place -- but opinions differ on just what is doing the attracting. Some say it is the games, the conventions, the drugs, the booze. The pussy. Others say . . well, they say the Indians knew what the fuck they were talking about, back when they were still alive and still able to talk about it.

Me, I don't know. But I know a lot of people here don't think the gambling is the reason this place is so violent. Locals talk of outside agents -- meaning, there is more to the desert and something be out there, than anybody wants to admit. Yeah. For a long time now, hell, even before this town WAS a town, people whispered about demons and devils -- and not the kind who come here to gamble, but the kinds of demons right out of hell. The kind you and nobody else is going to believe in until you come straight to face with one of them. And then it will be too late to believe. Yeah.

And you know, too, they did all them atomic-tests here during the 50's? Yeah. So anything could be out there on that desert. And I hope David don't go fucking around out there. Hope he's got better sense than that, cause that boy don't know what he's in for. And, likewise, I hope he don't take no 'tude with the people who run this town -- cause they ain't none to be fucked with. These guys play for keeps, man.

So, anyway, David is a standup guy. Kind of naive. Good looking, though. Girls seem to want to know him -- but, course, that don't mean much in a town where a fifty will get you more ass than you can handle, know what I mean?

Ah, and while David is telling you how his searching for his missings are going, I'm gonna be sharing lots of stories wid ya about things here. About what the mob's done, who's poking whom, what game's in town. Sort of where the girls and the gats are. Shit like that. And I promise it won't bore you. Course, it ain't gonna be nowhere near as exciting as what David's got in store, I know dat. Cause he's dug up these diaries from around the 1880's, or there bouts and they make some . . . sick reading. That's all I can say about it. People dying. People gettin whacked. People doing all kinds of sick shit. That's what them diaries mount to. And you might like them. Too, there's Billy Cohen, used to be he was an enforcer for the Banana Boys, as we call them now. But in their day, the Boys controlled this town. And back in those days, Billy Cohen did and saw some mean shit. Saw people take it all kinds of ways. Yup. Billy's one mean prick. And you don't wanta piss in his ear, believe me. Cause he's still jake with more than a few of the crews here.

But, anyway, David has been sounding Billy, trying to get a handle on what might have happened to his dad. And Billy and David, they're getting along fine. Could be, David gets in over his head here, Billy could be the one to turn to for . . . well, let's call it moral support, shall we. (Hell, you need somebody tortured or killed, Billy's the guy you want to get to do it. Damned straight!)

So, David has been listening to Billy talk. Billy seems to have this need now, now that he's gotten older, to confess all the deeds h's done. And there's a lot of them. Bad deeds. And Billy's told David he can write them all down. Record them for history. So you can be sure, David is going to share them stories with you, boys and girls. And they're some stories, believe you me. And that's all I'm gonna say about it.

Anyway, I think I've said what I set out to say. I wanta tell you that me and Vegas were made for the other, know what I mean? I mean, I can dig the gold rope chain. The expensive watches, the fast living, staying cooked on coke and champagne. And I like the girls, man. Like the fuck out of em. Live fast, stay young. That's what it's all about. Well, gotta go. Got a show to do, baby. Talk to you later. And don't get any on ya!

"All the horrors or Heaven, all the pleasures of Hell." This is what Dennis Pettigrew, 24, said when asked why he raped and then murdered his 16 year old girlfriend, the raped and murdered her 12 year old sister. He said, "I did it because I wished to know all the horrors of Heaven and all the pleasures of Hell." None questioned exactly what he meant by that. But the arresting officer, Carl Duggins was curious about the savagery of his twin attacks. "He bit both girls as those he were either an animal or a cannibal," he wrote in his report.

And that night, when Dennis Pettigrew hanged himself in his jail cell, his fellow prisoners described the "unidentifiable language in which he spoke," as well as "he spoke in a voice which made you want to just crawl inside your own skin and hide from it."

Yeah. Right. Can you believe such drivel? I can't. Or maybe I can. Maybe the truth is that I just don't wish to. Because if these reports, and others like it are true, than . . . then we're all in all kinds of trouble.

"I don't know his name. The injuns give him one, though. But it don't translate into our tongue. God help me, it is in me already . . . I must rite what I know quickly. I know it lives beneath the hills and the mountains. It lives in the sand, being part of it. And I know it can live inside of us, taking us over, making us do what it wills. Shit and fuck. These things fascinate it. It is filthy and foul. It likes killing. And fucking. And killing. Blood -- it loves the smell, the taste of blood. And this creature, this spirit or demon, loors people here. Loors them here to there death, to do his blasphemous bidding. Thank the good God this is the middle of the desert and none will ever have reason to come here to Las Vegas. For if people were ever to populate this desert hell in number, it will be freed. And it will be stronger than ever. " -- Kyle Plinkton, 1868

Yeah. Right. The disturbed rantings of a lunatic. You think not? Look at his faulty spellings, his tragic sentence constructions. Yeah, he was definitely mad -- to write like that? So don't take old Kyle too seriously, because sometime before or after writing those meaningless words, Kyle murdered his fellow miners. Butchered all eight of them, variously using a carbine, a shotgun, a six-shooter, and a hunting knife. But his weapons of choice were a pick axe and a shovel. He used those latter two implements to dismember his victims. (And according to reports sworn in at the time, "HE did 'bugger' several of his fellers." Kyle Plinkton was undoubtedly just another sick motherfucker, who hadn't the guts to admit to his crimes. And so he blamed his violence on something which "lives beneath the sand." Yeah. Right.

The report continues: "Kyle Plinkton did bludgeon his fellers till their brain matter looked like cranberry paste, with but a touch of grey there in. Several of his fellers had their bowels ripped out from their bodies. All had been repeatedly shot."

The report finishes with a plethora of details about good old Kyle, himself. And Kyle, before he crushed his own skull somehow, cut his man-shaft off with his hunting knife. (Ouch! What kind of nut does this, right? What kind of man possessed!? I mean, I've heard it said that if you don't use it, you lose. it. But -- Omigod!)

And according to Kyle, something drove im to these atrocities. Something which lives out there in the desert, and has lived there since, "This world was created by God Almighty, hisself." (Kyle and his fellows worked just outside of present day Las Vegas, in what was then known as Diablo Mine #4. The mine was subsequently closed.) Kyle said that this creature, which lives beneath the sand, and which is hidden because of the desert's vastness, is beyond Evil, as the word is ordinarily understood. "I have felt it in me, and it knows not such distinctions as good and evil, knowing only what it wants: That is its law. To do only what it wishes . . . And to it, we are no account save to feed its many hungers."

Kyle went on to say that we, the rest of us, are safe enough from this being -- for as long as we exercise sufficient sense to stay away from the desert, which sounds like a good idea to me. I mean, why would anyone come to a fucking desert?! There's nothing here but sand and sand, and spiders, snakes and scorpions -- and all those barren mountains, which look as if they're naught but great spades full of earth, heaved and tossed from out of the Earth by some great giant.

Fast forward to moder day Las Vegas, a city of 1.6 million. In the 1960's, Vegas had a population of merely 65,000. And gambling, its protagonists argue, is solely responsible for Las Vegas' phenomenal growth. Today, McCarran Airport is the nation's sixth busiest, using 1 million gallons of jet fuel a day, just to fly all the gamblers in and out of Vegas. And 68 million people visited Vegas in 2004 alone. 68 million. Hell, many of the world's nations -- most of them, in fact -- don't have 68 million people. Not even close.

And Las Vegas is so remote, two pipelines are used to carry in the city's fuel. The two pipes, on 8 inch, the other 14 inch, carry gasoline and jet fuel from Colton, California, some 228 miles away. Las Vegas is indeed isolated from the rest of the country.

But Las Vegas is a success, Baby! People come here from all over the world expecting to go home with a whole lot less cash than what they came here with. That's just the name of the game! But the fans expect a lot for their money. They expect good games, hot babes, drugs and alcohol. And great sex! And in Vegas, that is what they get: They get fucked. But that's the name of the game, the way it is played here in Glitter Gulch, where every man has a chance to be a winner!

People gladly leave their morals at home. There ain't no God here in Vegas. In fact, there's a sing just south of the city which reads: "Take a flying fuck God. We don't need your shit here!"

The Strip. MGM Grand. Treasure Island. El Cortez. Binnions. The Cultural Corridor. The alphabet streets. Nellis Air Force Base. Wedding chapels. Scandals concerning public officials. Bribes. Drugs. Murder. Rape. These are the essentials of modern day Vegas. These are the commodities, the sights and the sounds which make this city great! And it is Vegas, with its gambling and its sin (Not to mention its great and easy sex.), which draws visitors here by the millions. Here . . . to the middle of the desert.

And Vegas is, indeed, the heady stuff of CSI: Las Vegas. Of Las Vegas staring James Caan -- but none of that or all of that is even the half of it. Ain't a good ten percent of what goes on here. Nope. Cause the real Vegas, it don't show. It's hiding: Kept carefully concealed from tourists and from locals, alike. Vegas is about sin and pleasure, to be sure. But Vegas is about allowing each tourist to . . . well, to be that person which he (or she) truly is. Which means that in Vegas, you can take your particular sickness out of the box, walk it around, take it out to lunch, and otherwise have all kinds of fun with it, because nobody notices. Nobody cares. Because everybody here is too busy with their own sickness to give a shit about anybody else's. Ah, Vegas!

And Vegas is America's number one destination for conventions, which brings a lot of rich but very troubled people here to the middle of the desert. And the height of the tourist season, for gamblers and conventionists alike, is summer. The good old summer time. And in the summer, all that heat. All that passion and desire. Well, one can get a bit overheated here. And thus, what one says after exposure to Vegas and the desert, should all be taken with a grain of salt. Believe me.

Take Carrie Poole, for instance. This blonde 17 year old walked away from her family, who, in 2002, were staying at The Silver Nugget. Days later, when she was found, she said she wasn't responsible for the things she'd done. She blamed it on the heat -- and something which rode on the heat. And Carrie Poole, probably thinking herself a modern day Carie Nation, took an axe to the Gonzales family, killing Adolfo and Ranita, and their 3 children. But what didn't make sense was her crazed need to have sex with each of the 5 victims -- both before she killed them. And then, again, after they were dead. But before our dear miss Poole could be properly interrogated, she politely lost her mind. And at this writing, she remains insane. And the moral of this story is simple: The desert is no place for any human being to be, especially in the summer.

Then there is the story of Kathern McGraw, who disappeared in 2004 from the Lied Children's Museum. Nine days later, when Kathren McGraw was discovered --[She was displayed prominently on a cairn of stone. It appeared she had been sacrificed. She was nude, of course. Her blonde pubes floated like feathers in the wind, and they glistened with some fluid which I can not yet identify. Her organs had been indelicately removed by a sharp instrument. Her tiny nipples were pierced and burned. And the toxicology report on her vagina revealed semen. There were, as well, rips and tears on the vaginal wall. But what is truly remarkable, is this: The semen wasn't human. Nor was it animal. And it appears that whomever (whatever) raped her delighted in her pain and suffering, for it apparently went to great length to keep her alive, thereby to prolong his sadistic pleasures. And Kathren Mc Graw, identified by her fingerprints and her DNA, looked not to be 15 years old (which was her age), but rather she looked to be 80 years old. IT is as if her youth and her innocence were literally sucked out of her. -- End of M.E. Report, Dated June, 5, 2004]

And for the record, my name is David Burton Steiner. I am 25. College educated. Something of a writer. Something of a stranger to myself, to others. And I have come here to Las Vegas in search of my sister and my father, both of which have turned up missing. And what will follow, will be the details of my search through Vegas. And being an amateur historian, I find it compelling to note those many stories about Vegas past, for these stories, as I encounter them, all have a central theme: And that theme consists of some unnamed thing which lives out there on the desert. Odd, but I am not a desert person, myself. I was born and raised in New York City. I am light of skin. Light of hair. And I am not one given to mysteries. Or to heat. And this is what is odd. What is truly odd: I can feel that desert calling out to me. Beckoning me. That is strange, isn't it? Well, Don, I must end this transcript for now. But I will keep in touch, recording every event, just as it happens. Signed: David Steiner.

"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.