A Twist Of Noir

Interlude Stories: Albert Tucher

2012-01-23T08:55:00.000-06:00

THE WORST THING IN THE WORLD - ALBERT TUCHER

“It could be worse,” said Mary Alice.

“How?” said Diana.

“Instead of a hooker, you could be a kindergarten teacher and feel like this all the time. Six-year-olds spread even more germs than clients.”

“At the moment that doesn’t help much.”

Diana reclined against the three pillows that her friend had arranged behind her. Mary Alice sat beside the bed on a wooden chair from Diana’s kitchen.

“Think you could eat some chicken soup?”

“I know I should, but my head hurts too much.”

It was the worst cold of her life. She couldn’t remember feeling this bad even as a child.

“Speaking of teachers, I hear you’re a good one,” said Mary Alice. “Very strict. And you look hot in glasses.”

“I know the guy you mean. I’m pretty sure he’s the one who gave me this cold.”

“So much for trying to distract you.”

“I know. I appreciate the effort.”

Diana turned her head from side to side on the pillow and felt the pressure in her skull relent for the moment. She knew the virus was only faking mercy, but right now she was grateful for anything.

“Thanks for all your help,” she said. “You must have things to do.”

“No, it’s okay.”

“Really. I’ll be fine.”

“You don’t look fine. I can stay.”

Diana studied her friend, who usually had a shorter attention span than this. The scrutiny made Mary Alice squirm.

“I guess there are some things I could take care of.”

Mary Alice got up from the chair and dawdled her way out of the bedroom. Her footsteps slowed even more as she neared the front door of Diana’s rented Cape Cod.

This was getting weirder and weirder. What did Mary Alice think was outside?

Diana listened, but she didn’t hear the door open. A long moment later, Mary Alice’s footsteps reversed themselves, and she and appeared in the bedroom doorway.

“I did a bad thing.”

The forty-ish brunette in her skirt and heels looked like a little girl waiting for a scolding. Some clients would pay a lot to see that.

“What?” said Diana.

“I have a stalker.”

“Occupational hazard.”

“Tell me about it,” said Mary Alice. “You know how a guy can act like a normal client for months and then get all weird on you?”

“Unfortunately, I do. So how is that your fault?”

“That part isn’t.” Mary Alice took a deep breath to prepare her confession. “I came here to hide out. And I thought I managed to shake him off, but he’s out there sitting in his car.”

“Fantastic,” said Diana. “So now he also knows where I live.”

“Are you mad?”

“What do you think?”

“Well, with you it’s hard to tell.”

Mary Alice had a point. Clients never knew what Diana was thinking. Her poker face helped in her business, but it spilled over into the rest of her life.

“Do I know him?”

“Macho Leon,” said Mary Alice. “With the guns.”

“Great. Just the guy I want following me around.”

Diana sat up and swung her feet over the side of the bed. A moment ago the exertion would have set her head pounding again, but a surge of adrenaline prevented that for now. She thought about Leon. In her mental filing cabinet his name appeared under two headings: Possibly Scary, and Let Sleeping Dogs Lie. Unfortunately, Mary Alice had moved him into the Active Threat column.

She replayed some of the conversations she had survived with him. They were hard work. Pretending to agree with a client’s opinions was basic business smarts, but with Leon it made her want to take a Lysol shower. One of his views in particular stuck out.

“I have an idea,” she said.

“I hoped you would,” said Mary Alice.

“What’s the worst thing in the world to Leon?”

“I give up.”

“Oh, come on. You know him. Lesbians.”

“Oh. Well, that’s second, really. Gay guys are first on his hate list.”

“That doesn’t help us. But the first thing he ever said to me was, ‘I hope you’re not some rug-munching lesbian.’”

“What did you say?”

“I always tell the client what he wants to hear, but this time it was even the truth.”

“Why you don’t do women?” said Mary Alice “I always wondered. There’s good money in threesomes.”

“I just don’t. Or at least, I won’t until I have to. Which might be now, because we know how to make him run to his mommy.”

A smile spread across Mary Alice’s face.

“You know what that means,” said Diana. “No more of his paydays for either of us. But he’ll be off your back. And mine.”

“That’s if he doesn’t shoot us. He loves his guns.”

“Or he’ll just disappear. I guess we need to find out.”

Diana got out of bed and went to her robe where it hung on the back of the bedroom door. She put the robe on over the T-shirt that she wore for sleeping, which was soaked with the sweat of illness. Before she could change her mind, she took Mary Alice by the hand and led her down the hall. She opened the front door. Hand in hand, she and Mary Alice descended the four steps and turned toward each other.

“Make it look good,” said Diana.

“No problem.”

Diana was out of practice. Clients got a peck on the cheek, but she evaded their lips. With no boyfriend since high school, and few dates that weren’t business-related, she didn’t do much kissing.

She tilted her head to the side. Mary Alice did the same. They stepped in close, and their lips met.

Come on, Diana told herself. You’re supposed to be a professional.

She tried to remember what actors did on TV, but her imagination failed her. Mary Alice put her arms around Diana’s neck. As Diana wondered what she thought about that, Mary Alice snuck her tongue through Diana’s lips. Diana almost pulled away, but she caught herself.

Mary Alice hummed softly as her tongue did some exploring. Diana counted to ten, and then made it twelve just to prove she could. Then she pulled away. She had a vague feeling that she should make some parting gesture to make it look good, and damn, there was her right hand rising to stroke Mary Alice’s cheek.

Mary Alice smiled. She put her hand over Diana’s and held it against her face.

On the street an engine roared, and tires squealed.

“There he goes,” said Mary Alice.

“Now you go,” said Diana. “Or I’ll sneeze on you.”

Mary Alice smiled indulgently.

“And if you catch my cold, don’t complain.”

“I won’t. I’ll deserve it.”

“Yes, you will.”

BIO: Albert Tucher is the author of over thirty published hardboiled crime stories and five unpublished novels about suburban prostitute Diana Andrews. His latest Diana story Value For The Money (and when it’s Al and Diana, it’s always value for your money) can be had at Untreed Reads.

Interlude Stories: Kieran J. Shea

2012-01-22T09:12:00.000-06:00

THE VAGUENESS OF MAYBES - KIERAN J. SHEA

I deserved it. You steal and you get caught, you pay. It was as simple as that.

“What were you thinking, huh?”

What was I thinking? Not clearly enough apparently. Thought me and Mike the Spike had the job down neat. It wasn’t like it was either of our first shipping container boost for crying out loud. The scored-off serial numbers—we moved all those Honda outboards two states away and everything, the whole job, it was good to go right out of the box. Or so I thought.

Sitting there I wondered if Mike the Spike had tipped his hand after a similar surprise visit. No way. Mike the Spike was good thief. Mike the Spike was as hard as they come.

I had about my fill of these two rent-a-toughs dispatched by Hunt to send his message. What, did they actually expect me to speak clearly with the three count number they did on my jaw? My head throbbed and my mouth was a slosh of watery iron. I can take a punch but two on one and some doubled-up tube socks full of golf balls? Mmm...not so much.

“Mr. Hunt wants whatever money you got for those engines and he wants the name of the jerkoff you unloaded them to, McCabe. He wants those engines back.”

I nodded and inched back to the wall of my kitchen. Lifted myself up until my shoulders rested against an unfinished section of drywall I’d hung the day before. Planted my hands at my sides on the linoleum and took a bloody, wet breath through the searing gaps of my nostrils.

Just a beating. Those two, no way did they have the horses for bigger risks. I squinted up at the two kids with the one eye that hadn’t completely puffed shut. Couple of gangly buzzcut fucks very impressed with their young buck strength and riding the rush. Unlaced Timberlands and matching hooded Philadelphia Eagles sweatshirts. Shit, I had tools in my truck older than the both of them. Combined.

Slowly I lifted my wrist and motioned to the counter.

“What?”

I gestured a second time, weakly pulsing my hand in a gimme fashion.

“Gig, give this dumbass his cell.”

The one called Gig snatched my Nokia from the kitchen counter. He whipped the cell phone at my chest and the Nokia bounced down between my splayed legs. I shook my head.

“What, you want to write it down for us?”

I nodded and widened my good eye to confirm.

“Get this old fuck a pen and a piece of paper.”

The one called Gig started rifling through the drawers in my kitchen. He found a pen almost instantly but rummaged about some more.

“Can’t find no paper, Carm.”

“What’re you, fuckin’ retarded? Grab a paper towel or something. Jesus.”

Gig ripped off a stream of paper towels from the dispenser affixed to the underside of the cabinets and then walked over and tossed the pen and the paper towels in my lap. Drops of my blood stained the towels as I bent over and bloomed like small roses on the white, dappled paper. Super absorbent Bounty—the quicker picker-upper.

I plucked up my cell from between my legs and, making a show of it, thumbed through the cue. Clicked the pen twice and wrote a lie on the paper towel spread across my aching right thigh. Then I added a note that said I’d get the money back to Hunt by the end of the week and the engines too—promise. Another lie, but fuck them.

The second one, the one who answered to Carm, stood as he swiped the towels from my outstretched hand.

“Gah, blood all over these towels and shit. You better not have AIDS, old man.”

I didn’t say anything as he read what I’d scribbled down. Then I waited for the parting shots.

Old man? I guess so.

Covered up as best I could.

*

An hour or so later Morgan Leary made coffee in my kitchen as I dressed my ribs and tended to my wounds in the bathroom.

“Chock Full o’Nuts? Ugh. Life is short, Dave. You should at the very least buy some good beans and grind them down. Get some Sumatra, some of that flavored spiced pumpkin coffee they do this time of year. Drop twelve bucks and get some Starbuckin’ wage slave to set you up with a good drip blend.”

I groaned and dabbed a wet washcloth to my split lip. Outside the salt-glazed bathroom window a wet onshore wind rattled the lone scrubby tree in the clay pot on my patio.

“Look, don’t worry about it,” Morgan said, “You win some, you lose some. That merchandise was hotter than shit, they know it and we know it. It’s all part of the game. If your friend down Maryland hasn’t unburdened himself by now he’s a total fucking idiot. Even if they find out some other way, Hunt and his guys go beating the bushes for that stuff they’ll be at a dead end. I’ll tell you what, though. I’d love to see the look on Hunt’s face when he finds out what you gave those two clowns was bullshit.”

I stepped into the kitchen as Morgan poured us both a mug.

“Heard from Mike the Spike?” I asked quietly.

Morgan slopped some half and half into his coffee from a carton pint and handed me a zipper locked plastic bag of ice cubes.

“Mike the Spike? He’s good. Mike the Spike is up north.”

I took the ice. “Up north?”

“His relatives or someplace. Trust me, Mike the Spike is well aware of what’s happened so he’s going to be away from Atlantic City for a while until all this Hunt business settles down.”

Morgan took a slurp from his mug and set it down on the counter. He tilted my head with one of his spade-sized hands as he checked my butterflies. I knew about Morgan’s past as a semi-professional ECHL left-wing enforcer more than a decade past, so I trusted his patch and go judgment.

“You’ll heal. Golf balls in a couple of tube socks, man, I never thought of that.”

“Creative.”

“I’ll say.”

“So what’s the deal?”

“With what? You and me? We’re cool. You take some of your end and see the doctor I wrote down for you and make sure there’s no internal bleeding. Zonk back some Percs, take it easy for a few days. Heal up.”

“But they knew.”

“So they knew, big whoop. Maybe there was hidden camera that you guys didn’t know about. Maybe somebody saw you and Mike the Spike and decided to snap a picture.”

“But everything was cold. The truck I ditched, the plates...”

“Of course they were. I wouldn’t expect anything less from you but things have a way of turning to shit, don’t they?”

“Still...”

“Listen to you. Still. You’re lucky it wasn’t worse.”

“Give me a little credit.”

“I always do, but yet here we are, Dave. Here we fuckin’ are.”

It took Herculean effort to lower myself down at the kitchen table. The adhesive tape around my ribs pulled at my dry skin and my back felt like it had been pole-axed. With Mike the Spike out of the picture I knew I was on my own with Hunt and his goons and my uneasiness must’ve shown through the swollen bruises on my face. Morgan dragged out a chair and adjusted his tan cashmere topcoat as he sat down.

“Look, I know you’re working on this bungalow here. Smart thing that. Putting your cash into something with a long haul value given what’s going on out there and at your age and all, but you need to understand something here, okay? Look at me now. You need to be a ghost, Dave. You need to disappear for a while until all this nonsense levels out.”

I glanced away again. Stretched my stiff neck.

“How long?”

“You have someplace you can go for a couple of weeks?”

“Not really.”

“How about a motel?”

“C’mon, Morgan. I don’t want to spend my days watching crappy cable and jumping every single time housekeeping knocks. I’m in no condition to defend myself and suck at that anyway if you can’t already tell. Those two freaks know where I live, man. They know where I live and when they come up short and Hunt doesn’t get his engines back or the money I got for them they’ll be coming back here.”

“That’s your fault.”

“I know.”

“Listen to me now. You’re exposed and this is a mess, but in the grand scheme of things it’s not that big of a deal. Think about it. You’ve been good to me and for intents and purposes by that you’ve been good to a certain individual we both know across town. This territory comes with the nature of your abilities and while you should’ve been more careful, this first and only time I can remember things ever falling apart on your end. You’re a stand up guy, Dave. We appreciate your services. Hell, I appreciate your services but these low-balling twats and their dirtbag, wannabe honcho Hunt? Him sticking his fingers in our backyard? Those morons have no idea who they’re fucking with.”

Of course I knew who Morgan was talking about when he said a certain individual we both know across town but didn’t dare speak Dante Donofrio’s name. Morgan and I were cordial, but one smack down a decade is about all I wanted to handle at forty-five years of age, thank you very much.

“So where am I at really?” I asked.

Morgan drank some of his coffee and leaned back. Leveled a warm, bemused look.

“In good hands, Dave, in good hands.”

*

As much as it hurt I did what Morgan told me to do. I set fire to my end seeing Donofrio’s special quack over in Somers Point, bought an idiot-proof .38 from another guy Morgan referred me to, and vacuumed a little over two grand from my safety deposit box. Went up north to Seaside Heights in Ocean County to lay low for three and a half weeks until I didn’t lurch about like some gimped-out zombie humping to the convenience store for microwaved food.

After nearly a month of introspective soul kicking and skipping AA meetings for fear that I might come across a rat (it’s a small world don’t you know) I was going out of my gourd. Of course there was a time when I was much younger when I could put trouble like mine out of my head, but outside of meetings no one ever has the balls to admit just how much bad choices gain weight as you grow older. One minute you’re young and the future seems like a dare. The next thing you know you’re taking a fall. Fair enough. Do a small three and a half year jolt and it sucks to high heaven but you do it clean and come out on the other side. You come back and jump through all the shameful hoops. The so-called friends who never had an inkling about your dark sidelines keeping their distance. The contractor jobs hit so thin you find yourself groveling. A couple of lean years go by and life gets back to some semblance of the order you remembered and then one fine day a friend of a friend presents an opportunity you just can’t pass up. Goes well. Helps with the bills and your daily hovering act with the booze and one small score leads to another. Soon you’re lying to yourself again, thinking you’re invincible and eye-balling liquor store specials in the newspaper. Fuckin’-a, I should’ve quit while I was ahead.

On a frigid Tuesday night when I’d had enough of hiding in my motel room up north I drove my pickup truck out to the local mall and bought a pre-paid cell. Making my way down through the thinning rush hour traffic on the Garden State Parkway, I dialed Morgan. Music thumped loud over the line when he answered on the fifth ring.

“Morgan, it’s Dave.”

“Dave McCabe! Hey-hey! How’s the hamburger?”

I touched my face as I drove. “Better. Pills are gone.”

From the sound of his voice Morgan seemed to be moving. The heavy bass in the background abated some as I heard something else, perhaps a door, clack closed.

“Mmm, those pills. Surprised you even took them at all seeing you’re chummy with Bill W. Habit forming those Percs. You should try Aleve.”

“I have and I am.”

“Good. That’s the spirit. In step all the way.”

“So where am I now?”

“Where are you now? You tell me.”

“I’m driving.”

“Oh yeah? Driving? Where to?”

“South.”

Morgan paused. “So I trust you’ve been shopping.”

“Of course.”

“You know there are laws in this state, Dave.”

“It’s seven o’clock at night. Jesus Christ, Morgan, it’s dark out. No one can see me. Everybody and their friggin’ mothers are on the goddamn cell phones. Nobody cares.”

“You get pulled over by a state trooper and you’re on a burner you’ll care plenty.”

“Look, I’m cool all right? And for the record I’m traveling light too. No way am I that stupid.”

“Never said you were. So, if you’re light, where did you make your deposit?”

“Couple of swamps near Toms River.”

“Good. That’s good. Smart. Fight Club is still sitting on your place though.”

I banged my fist on the steering wheel, “Damn it! Fuck. What the—shit!”

“Relax,” Morgan laughed, “I’m just pulling your chain. Lighten up. A week back me and a couple of boys went over and introduced ourselves and shared the gospel. This Hunt character, he’s a regular Chamber of Commerce and Knights of Columbus type family man. Once we put things in proper perspective for him…it was a Come To Jesus in about three seconds, give or take.”

As Morgan spoke the southbound lanes of the Parkway eased left and opened out over the expanded Mullica River Bridge. The bridge was part of a fifty-three million dollar project that spanned the vast westward marshes of the Great Bay and Little Egg Inlet estuary. To the east and south I could glimpse the first low edges of the Atlantic City skyline glowing stark and white like a neon-ribboned jaw. The noxious, sulfuric stench of low tide poured through the vents.

“So what’s that mean exactly?” I asked.

“It means you’re in the clear.”

A bus heading for the casinos streaked past on my left.

“You’re positive?”

“Yeah. No one is going to mess with you so keep driving and come on home. Take care of your house and get your footing. Stop by the place when you get a chance and I’ll buy you a Coke and lap dance.”

I felt lightheaded with relief. Briefly I wondered what the Morgan meant when he said he shared the gospel with Hunt and a chill slithered in my gut.

“Jesus, Morgan,” I said, “thanks. Thanks for everything. I’m really sorry about all of this. I guess I owe you.”

“Forget it. C’mon, didn’t I tell you that you were in good hands?”

“You did.”

“See? There you go. Hey, now that I think about it you know what? If you’re feeling so obliged my sister’s attic needs some new insulation rolled. Her husband, God, he’s a real whiney piece of dogshit and has been putting off the job for months.”

“Of course. No problem. I’d be happy to help her out. Just give me her address and I’ll take care of it right away when I get back, no sweat.”

“Excellent! That’s my man. Dave McCabe, Mister Fix It.” Morgan went quiet for a moment. “Listen, Dave. I know all this business has been rattling to you and all, but once you get settled I think I might have something else you might be interested in too.”

“Oh yeah?”

“It’s not until way after New Year’s,” Morgan added, “but I think the specs on this thing could really use someone like you who’s going to be walking on eggshells and birddoggin’ the corners.”

“So who? Just me and Mike the Spike again?”

“Yeah, you two. Maybe. Maybe another dude on point.”

I wanted to ask who he had in mind for the third. I never liked the vagueness of maybes, but I knew better than to ask.

“You, uh, think that’s wise, I mean, with all that’s gone down recently? You know, me being back on the job so soon?”

Morgan laughed heartily and I nearly missed my exit.

“Guys like you, Dave,” Morgan said, “you’re always on the job.”

Interlude Stories: Gavin Bell

2012-01-21T08:46:00.000-06:00

A JOB WORTH DOING - GAVIN BELL

Barnaby lifted the padlock off the catch, prized open the front panel of the wooden crate stamped ‘FRAGILE’, and drew a critical breath through his teeth. Mr Pendergast had done one hell of a job on his girlfriend this time.

Susan was precisely five feet two inches tall, and weighed exactly ninety pounds. She was currently a brunette, and sported a black skirt, jacket and white blouse, as though on her way back home from the office. Around her neck, she wore a small silver cross on a chain. Barnaby bent down so he could examine the damage. A clean, deliberate cut had been made across the latex of her throat, and two smaller incisions had been made in the form of tears, advancing from the chestnut-on-pearl glass balls in her eye sockets to the bottom of her rouged cheeks.

Barnaby shook his head. He’d have liked to be able to say that this was the weirdest thing he’d encountered this year, but then again he’d have liked to be able to say he repaired computers for a living. Different strokes for different folks, he mused, recalling one of his late mother’s favourite sayings. He unbuckled the doll and carefully hefted it over his shoulder.

He was only a little out of breath by the time he’d carried Susan down to the workshop in his garage, which would have struck a casual observer as a cross between a small provincial mortuary and the back room in a shoe repair store. Barnaby flicked the switch for the overhead fluorescent lights, which blinked and flickered until the room was bathed in a slightly green-tinged light. The shelves lining the walls of the garage were piled high with tools and boxes of spare parts. The concrete floor was littered with the debris of past operations: a threadbare wig here, a four-fingered plastic hand there. In the centre of the workshop was a wooden table, about seven feet long and half as wide. The table had four steel rings fitted to the corners, to which were attached straps to restrain the dolls and prevent them slipping off the table during maintenance. At four thousand dollars a pop, you couldn’t be too careful with the merchandise.

Barnaby carefully laid the doll down on the table and removed its clothes and underwear before securing each of the straps around its limbs. As he prepared the patient, he began to mentally plan out the procedure.

Now that he’d gotten the clothes off, he could see that the face was the only area to have suffered severe damage. Standard wear and tear was evident in the usual areas, of course, but that would be addressed as a basic part of the maintenance routine. The cuts meant that the entire fascia would need to be replaced. It looked to be a D14, if Barnaby wasn’t mistaken. He ran his hand along the appropriate shelf until he came to the right box and confirmed his initial judgement. D14 was a fairly popular face: great cheekbones. There were only two left. Barnaby made a mental note to order another box from the company as he went to work.

*

Susan was back in her crate and making her way back to Virginia, good as new, as Barnaby settled down in front of America’s Next Top Model with a microwave macaroni and cheese and a cherry Coke. He took a lot of pride in his work; after all each time one of his clients sent him a doll to be repaired, they were entrusting him with one of their most prized possessions. In some cases, the men who sent Barnaby their dolls even thought of them as their partners.

The company that made them, Living Dolls Ltd., specialized in ultra-realism; using lifelike latex skin and real human hair so that from a distance they could almost be mistaken for real people. Not that many of the customers used their simulacra at a distance, of course. Living Dolls didn’t offer any real after-sales support, but they were happy to refer clients on to Barnaby and one or two other independent contractors for repairs.

As with any of his repair jobs, Barnaby had put a lot of effort into working on Susan this afternoon, so it was not unusual that he dropped into a contented snooze after finishing his dinner.

*

It was several weeks later when Susan returned.

Barnaby’s line of work was highly specialized, and therefore lucrative, but the workload wasn’t particularly intense. In fact, he’d only repaired one other Living Doll in the intervening weeks; an improbably large-breasted six footer with worn-out knee joints. Customers tended to go a couple of years in between getting their girls serviced, so Barnaby was surprised to see a familiar Virginia return address on the packing slip.

When he got Susan out of the crate and onto the operating table, it was clear that much more work would be required on this occasion.

Susan was blonde this time, and her throat was cut and the face mutilated in the same fashion as before. This time, however, the stomach had been sliced open, revealing the belly padding and parts of the silicon skeleton.

This was starting to get unusual.

Deterioration in Living Dolls was a natural consequence of their frequency of use, but intentional, repeated damage like this was unheard of. Quite apart from the high cost of repairs, Living Doll owners tended to treat their products as though they were real people. Barnaby shuddered as he imagined this kind of treatment applied to a real, living and breathing person. He ran his hand over the doll’s face, his fingers dipping into the scarred cheeks, and snapped them back as he encountered a tacky substance in one of the gashes. He examined the small rust-brown patch on his index and forefingers.

Makeup. Surely.

He ran his hands over the doll’s body, peeling back the slashed layers of latex skin. There were traces of rust-brown on the abdomen wounds too, as though the blade that had been used was still dirty from a previous job.

Barnaby sniffed the substance on his fingertips, gathered his thoughts for a few moments, and then wiped them on the chamois he kept nearby to buff the dolls’ eyeballs.

*

When one begins with a person’s last name, full address, and credit card number, it’s often possible to learn pretty much everything worth knowing about them within thirty minutes on the Internet.

Barnaby now had plenty of useful information on John James Pendergast, on his small hometown sixty miles outside Charlottesville, and on the two murdered and mutilated prostitutes that had been dragged out of the river there; one brunette, the other blonde. The website of the state police had a special section on the murders, and a number to call with information.

It was this number that Barnaby now dialled from the payphone outside Freddy’s diner. It rang three or four times before a woman’s bored voice answered at the other end.

Barnaby said, “I think I may have some information about the two women who were murdered.”

The woman’s voice immediately perked up. “Can I take your name, sir?”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Barnaby said. “Now before I go any further, I have to ask if there’s a reward for information.”

The woman’s voice took on a more cynical edge. “Well that would of course depend on the quality of the information.”

“I see.”

“Sir, are you still there?”

“Yes, yes, I’m sorry, I was just thinking. Tell me, the two women who were killed, how were they mutilated exactly? I’m sorry to be so blunt, but the newspaper reports were terribly vague, you see.”

“I’m afraid we can’t discuss details like that over the phone. If you’d like to come in and…”

“Were their faces cut?” Barnaby asked, a note of urgency creeping into his voice. “Did the wounds look like… like tears?”

Barnaby clearly heard the woman’s sharp breath on the other end. “Hold on a second, sir.” The line went very quiet, and Barnaby surmised that the woman had depressed the secrecy button. When her voice returned, she sounded professional and calm. “Sir, we’d like you to come in to talk to us.”

Barnaby hung up the phone. Dusk was beginning to fall, and he had to get the repairs completed on Susan as soon as possible if she was going to be shipped back to her owner tomorrow. It wouldn’t do for the letter to arrive too soon after the girl.

*

Sixteen weeks passed.

Susan returned to Barnaby twice over that period, each time with more extensive mutilations. Two more women were dragged out of the river, each with more extensive mutilations than the initial two bodies. And Barnaby’s post office box in a neighbouring state received three brown envelopes, each filled with two thousand dollars in tens and twenties.

The repairs alone paid well, but it was good to have a little extra income on the last day of every month; it took the edge off the bills. When Barnaby felt the vague stirrings of conscience, as he sometimes did in the moments before he dozed off in front of the T.V., he rationalized his new source of income as just one more personal service to a wealthy customer. Confidentiality was paramount in this line of work, of course, but that didn’t mean it had to come gratis.

The world don’t owe nobody a living, Barnaby, his dear departed mother had reminded him on many an occasion.

As for the unfortunate women… well. Virginia was a long, long way away.

*

Barnaby awoke from one of his post-operative slumbers and knew something was amiss even before his consciousness fully returned. There was no noise from the T.V., and the room seemed much colder. He could tell that his body was no longer enveloped in the comfort of his brown leather easy chair; in fact he was finding it difficult to move at all.

Barnaby opened his eyes and saw that he was in his garage, strapped to the operating table. His view was obstructed by one of the tall shelving units, but he could see that there was a figure hunched over his desk. Reasoning that, whatever was happening, he was clearly in an awkward situation, Barnaby decided to try communicating with his captor. He half-whispered out a tentative hello. There was no response. He cleared his throat and tried a more commanding tone.

“Who’s there? Why have you done this?” No response from the figure. Barnaby continued. “I want you to know that my wife is due home any moment now. If she sees something’s wrong, she’ll get the police down here faster than you can say ‘breaking and entering’.”

Still no response. Maybe whoever it was knew his wife had gone out for groceries a decade ago and hadn’t yet returned. Barnaby tugged at the leather restraints to no avail, cursing his own thoroughness in securing them with six-inch bolts. He strained his neck to try and get a better look at whoever the hell had tied him up in his own workshop. In his own goddamn workshop, for Christ’s sake. He managed to arrange his line of sight through a gap between two boxes of fingernails. He could just make out a woman’s blonde hair, sculpted in a too-perfect bob.

Susan?

The lights went out. Barnaby began to panic. Insane thoughts danced across his mind. Suppose the doll itself had somehow come to life and kidnapped him? He began to visualise Susan jerking up from her chair, staggering towards him with the single-mindedness of a car crash victim struggling away from the scene, flashing a grin that revealed her realistic-looking rubber teeth...

With an effort of will, Barnaby managed to corral his imagination and think rationally about the situation.

His captor was obviously behind him, having turned the lights off at the switch next to the doorway. From this angle, he couldn’t hope to get a look at him even if the lights were on. Frantically, his brain put two and two together.

Susan’s boyfriend had come to visit.

“Hello?” he asked again. The only answer was a low, raspy exhalation that sent tiny needles up and down the length of Barnaby’s spine. He swallowed and tried to figure out how J.J. Pendergast had tracked down his blackmailer.

The demand letters had been couched in anonymous terms, letting on only that the writer knew of Pendergast’s nocturnal activities and would withhold this information for a reasonable monthly fee. There was no mention of Susan. The letters had been typed and printed at a library, and mailed from out of state. But even if Pendergast had deduced Barnaby’s identity, how did he get this address? The dolls were shipped to the company, who forwarded them to Barnaby. Could someone at Living Dolls have passed on his details?

Barnaby nearly jumped out of his skin as a gnarled hand passed over his forehead, kneading the flesh of his face like it was warm pastry. The owner of the hand spoke then, in a raspy monotone. “Are you sorry for what you did?”

Barnaby didn’t waste any time on negotiation. “Yes. My God, yes, I’m sorry, I’ll make it right, you can have it all back, I didn’t mean...”

The hand jerked away from his face and a tall, stockily built man in a dirty brown leather jacket walked past him, Barnaby couldn’t see his face, but a miasma of body odour followed in the man’s wake. He smelled like an abandoned garbage truck in high summer. The man continued past the bottom of the table and past the shelving unit. Carefully, he lifted Susan from his chair and turned around so they were both facing Barnaby.

J.J. Pendergast was almost too ugly for a Living Doll. Unkempt, dirty, long grey hair framed a face that was pockmarked and scarred. An overbite revealed a top row of teeth with more absences than presences. At least he had a face, though. Susan’s blonde wig hung down around a blank oval with a round mouth and a rudimentary bump where the nose would be. Somehow the sight of the two lovers was even more terrible than Barnaby’s crazed fantasy of the walking doll.

Pendergast looked at Barnaby with disgust. “How you gon’ give us it back?”

This was good, Barnaby thought, the freak was open to negotiation. “I’ve still got all the money, every penny.” This was a lie, but if it would get him off the operating table, he’d find a way to get it back. “It’s all in my bank account, I can write you a check?” Pendergast looked back at him almost as impassively as Susan. Barnaby licked his lips. “Or we can go get it first thing in the morning, if you’d prefer.”

Pendergast mulled it over for a minute. When he spoke, he sounded confused: “You think this is... you think this is about money?”

Barnaby was taken aback. What else could it be about?

“I don’t care about money. I care about Susan.” Pendergast’s voice started to rise at the end of the sentence. He looked away from Barnaby’s prostrate form and scanned the board nailed to the wall, on which hung Barnaby’s tools.

Barnaby shuddered and tried to divert the man’s attention. “How did you find me?”

“The girl at the company. She told me I’d find you here,” he said, looking around the workshop with something like disappointment.

Just as he’d thought. Living Dolls had set this maniac on him, the spineless bastards.

“She wouldn’t tell me at first,” Pendergast continued. “I hadda persuade her.”

He reached into an inside pocket and pulled something fleshy and shapeless out. He dangled it from his fingertips, the way a ratcatcher would hold a dead rodent, and fixed Barnaby with a thousand yard stare. Barnaby focused on the object and realized it was the face from a Living Doll. Dear God... the face. That had to be it. He had run out of D14s, substituted an E12 on Susan’s last refit. The E12’s were almost indistinguishable from the D14s anyway, just the slightest shade of extra definition around the eyes. An improvement, if anything.

Pendergast gently placed Susan back down on the chair and selected a long blade from the tool board. He tested the point of the blade against his index finger and turned to Barnaby.

“Wait...” cried Barnaby, “what are you...”

“You took Susie’s face. So I’m gonna give her yours.”

Over the course of the final half hour of his life, Barnaby Reddin had ample time to reflect on the folly of cutting corners with his work. After all, as his late mother had been so fond of asserting, if a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.

BIO: Gavin Bell was born in Glasgow in 1979. He has worked as a petrol station attendant, taxman, salesman, research manager and pizza delivery boy. His story ‘A Living’ was shortlisted for the Quick Reads 'Get Britain Reading' prize, and published in the Sun Book of Short Stories, and his other stories have been published in Scribble magazine and First Edition. His non-fiction commentary Shining in the Dark - Stephen King: Page to Screen is available on Amazon as a Kindle e-book. He currently lives in Glasgow with a wife and two daughters, and is currently putting the finishing touches to a novel, a thriller entitled Killing Season.

Interlude Stories: Chris Benton

2012-01-20T08:49:00.000-06:00

CINEMA DRIVE - CHRIS BENTON

The night my daughter Karen disappeared, we had another fight about her mother, who fled from us five years ago with a crackhead lawyer.

I did love my wife once, I truly did. Her laughter calmed lunatics. When I came inside her on that New Years Eve, I knew she would conceive. And she did. And I knew it would be a girl. And I knew what her name would be as well. But after she was born, my wife became distant and restless. Post-partum depression was what everyone kept telling me. But her distance continued to gain miles. Even on Karen’s birthdays she was drunk or stoned beyond repair. She was a highly gifted speed typist, but kept losing job after job until she finally didn’t care.

It was during those years that she finally connected to Karen, and my exhaustion from working double shifts felt earned, and for a handful of years I was happy, tired, but happy. But then, shortly after Karen’s tenth birthday, my wife’s brain darkened again, and she was gone. And soon after, she was truly gone.

Karen missed her mother, missed her bad, and always loved a vision of her which lived in a warm, well-lit space, far away in the darkness of memory.

We were in our kitchen, about to leave to pick up her friend Pattie. They were going to a movie, and I honestly can’t remember why our small talk took a turn for the worse.

“I remember her telling me over and over that she loved me more than Jesus!” Karen screamed. She was a powerful screamer, a clear, steady condemner, just like her mother.

“She did, honey, she loved most everything more than Jesus,” I said as sincere as I could.

Perhaps the birth pangs of our fight had something to do with the guy she was dating at the time, Brian Wilson, a slouching moron who wore eyeliner. It didn’t matter what the reason was, though, it always came back to her mother who plunged into the heart of nowhere when Karen turned eleven.

“I remember mom telling me that you loved your beer and your dumbass black and white movies more than you loved me. You know why I believed her, because I don’t remember one fucking time you tucking me in to bed, or reading me a story. Essential shit, dad.”

Essential was a word she picked up from her mother. I remember Alison throwing that word at me like a hand grenade every time “a talk” became screams. How this was essential and that was essential. I guess Karen thought she was making profound points by wielding this word. Maybe she was.

“Why do you hate me so much, I’m here, ain’t I, honey? I’m not the one who boogied away to Never-Never Land.” My voice sounded feeble, defensive. She had done it again, had triumphed. I felt like I was arguing with her mother again, I felt like a scolded, pathetic child. And for a few seconds, I hated my daughter. I hated her because she saw how I felt and when she shook her head at me with a cruel smile I slapped her, slapped her mother’s smile right off her hard sharp chin. She cradled her face with her left hand and her eyes were filled with final disgust.

“I wish both of you had left, I probably would have been happier in a foster home, being fucked every night by a fake father.”

She marched away to her bedroom and slammed the door. I went to the fridge, grabbed a beer and killed it with four swallows. The stale pizza I had brought home after work looked like my last will and testament.

Ocean Theater was on Cinema Drive just two blocks away from the sea at the north end of Carolina beach. It was a small venue, with only two screens. When Karen opened the car door, I grabbed her arm gently and said, “Enjoy the movie, sweetheart.” She looked at my smile like it was a sick joke, yanked her arm free and slammed the passenger door with vindictive triumph.

I drove over to the Fat Pelican a mile away for a few beers while I waited for them. Inside there were men I recognized, but did not say a word to because I knew their family had forsaken them years ago, for reasons both familiar and deserved. I just drank my beer and listened to their desperate laughter and watched sports updates. On my fifth High Life my phone rang. It was Pattie, asking me if Karen was with me. A long cold moan began racing through my blood.

“Ain’t she with you at the movies?”

“She was, Mr. Melton, but she got up to go to the bathroom, but now the movie’s halfway over and I’m standing out front here and I don’t see her.”

The next forty-eight hours was a terrified blur of cops and questions and suspicious expressions I didn’t deserve. Yes, I had a fight with my daughter; I guess Pattie told them about that one, why did I lie about it? “Because it’s none of your goddamn business.” What did you fight about? “None of your goddamn business.” Their eyes were perched on my shoulder for a few days and after that they just ruled it a runaway, which I knew it wasn’t. I knew Karen hated me in some ways, I guess she had good right to, but I also knew I tried my utmost to give her anything she needed and wanted, and I knew deep down she did love me.

My boss gave me two-week’s vacation, which resulted in restraining orders from her ex-boyfriend as well as from Pattie. I needed them to remember a single detail that could help me, but all they gave me were shrugging shoulders and fearful inspections of their toes. The only person I called a friend stopped by a couple of times with beer and he basically acted the same, just buried his eyes in his crotch, or nodded thoughtfully at the floor.

I went back to Ocean Theater several times and sat in the same screening room my Karen and Pattie did. The movie they watched was still showing, some horseshit about of bunch of vampires wearing lipstick and hopping around in trees. I sat in the back row and studied the back of everyone’s head. Most of the viewers were kids, except for a few. I followed them out and took their license plates. One night a man followed me to my car and flashed a badge. Asked me what I was doing. I told him and he told me he knew. I asked him why the fuck did you ask me in the first place, cocksucker? He told me to go home, to leave it in “their” hands, told me I would be arrested if he saw me again.

I got laid off from my job a month later. I simply didn’t sort shit on the line anymore. I was just taking notes. My boss said good luck and he was sorry. I told him to go to hell. A former co-worker of mine had been selling me these diet pills, told me they would keep me awake if I dozed during my investigations. He was what you called a sympathetic asshole. They worked, though, nothing escaped me. The police had forgotten to bag the crushed corpse of a seagull in the parking lot. I mean, hell, the fucker might have seen something before it died. I put it in a ziplock freezer bag and took it home and tossed it in the fridge for future reference.

It was getting close to Christmas. I put a tree up in the den and wrapped Karen’s pillows with her dirty tee shirts. I laid the bundle on the couch and spoke to it and hugged it occasionally. We watched It’s A Wonderful Life over and over until she finally laughed with me in unison, especially at the part where George is about to leap off the bridge. Later that night I would carry her to bed and tuck her in and read her a story. When she was finally asleep I drove down to the mouth of Cinema Drive and parked in the dark behind Bonnie’s Fish Fry and walked to the shore. The sea never failed to swallow my prayers and screams. When my brain was dry I would walk back to Ocean Theater after it was closed, and gaze for hours at its flat cement skull, full of ridiculous, dead dreams.

I was sitting there on Christmas night, inside my car being slowly crushed by a clear cruel night under a scythe moon. I was sitting there, drinking the last of my pint of Kentucky Gentleman when I saw her. I thought I was hallucinating so I slapped myself several times, closed my eyes and took a deep breath and chewed a couple more diet pills to clear my mind.

And she was still there. And someone was with her. I quietly popped opened the trunk of my car and pulled out the tire iron. They didn’t notice me until I was maybe ten feet away from them. They were huddled together on the curb in front of the ticket booth giggling together and smoking a joint. My daughter was the first to notice me, and her giggles dropped dead in her throat.

“I’ve been worried sick about you; I’ve been dying from the fear of it all. Why didn’t you at least call me?”

Karen looked at me like I was a maniac. The man she was with, whom I didn’t recognize, had long ropey turds for hair.

“Uh, dude, I think you got the wrong person,” he told me, as he slowly rose. I swung the tire iron like a bat and his skull obeyed with a swift, red burst. His face ate the pavement and he laid there, arms outstretched, embracing the earth with a newfound gratitude.

Karen was running; she was a fast runner because she inherited her speed from me. I used to race those yuppie Yankee kids whose parents had bought out most of Whiskey Creek after my grandmother died. I left them behind me, every time. I was quick when I was a boy, and I was quick now. I was running as fast as that faggoty vampire Karen loved so much on the big screen. I tackled her and we went tumbling down the cold, blunt heart of Cinema Drive. She was already clawing my face before I could speak; I felt my left cheek come apart between her fingers as I grabbed both her wrists and shook her. Her head whiplashed from the asphalt and her eyes eloped from the world. She became as calm as a doll, and I whispered my thanks to her, over and over.

I brought her home and wrapped her head with her favorite pillow case and when I pushed play on It’s A Wonderful Life I heard the screeching from the fridge. I got up and opened it and the crushed gull fluttered into my face, nearly slicing off the tip of my nose with its beak before launching itself into the walls of the living room. After a few frantic minutes it finally found its true throne, upon the head of my sleeping daughter.

I fetched my 30-30 from the bedroom closet, and took aim at that dead French fry eating chicken, and when my trigger finger began to curl, it spoke; it was a warm flood of a voice, the voice of an angel. And it told me the truth, and showed me the path, straight out its eyeless, dangling head.

I gathered my false daughter into my arms and took us to my bedroom.

I shattered the picture of my wife her mother took the day before our wedding. I scotched taped it around the face of my fate before peeling off my clothes.

I’m looking forward to my execution. I’m looking forward to it like a boy before Christmas, because I know once my breath has left the earth, my crushed angel will pluck the rag of my soul from my sorry sack and fly it cross-country, where we’ll be waiting for you Karen, from Wilmington, to Wichita, to Seattle Washington, we’ll be waiting for you honey, long after the final credits have rolled.

Interlude Stories: Jason Chirevas

2012-01-19T08:59:00.000-06:00

MAN DOWN - JASON CHIREVAS

Leo pressed his dinner plate palms and butcher-block chest to the thick door. Fists and shouts pounded the other side. Slick with sweat, he stepped right and pulled a file cabinet down across the doorway.

“Leo!”

He stumbled round. Vin lay on his side across the grimy basement floor, his hand clamped over the back of his thigh, red.

“W-when?” Leo dropped to one knee.

“Right before we ran in here, I think.” Vin ground his teeth. “You got to take the thing.”

“I…I can’t.” Leo sunk to a hip. “I dunno where—”

“You know where.” Vin spasmed into jackknife and gripped his leg.

“But.” Leo shied from the noisy door. “In the service they says to never leave a man down.”

Vin slapped Leo’s bristly jaw with his dry hand. “This ain’t the fuckin’ service.” He grabbed a handful of Leo’s dirty, zippered sweatshirt. “Take the thing and get outta here before Dolan kills us both.”

Shots joined the voices and kicks at the barred door. Leo put both hands and feet under him and pushed himself erect. Streetlight stabbed through a rectangular window below the ceiling to the floor near Vin’s head. Leo’s kielbasa tongue swept his lips. “OK…OK, gimme the thing.”

Vin smiled between croaks of pain. “Good boy.” He rolled onto his healthy leg and yanked the thing from inside his suit jacket. Leo tucked it into his sweatshirt. He frowned at the thick crimson pool under Vin’s thigh. “Bye, Vin.”

“Wait.” Vin reached into his jacket again, wincing and squealing. He pulled his chunky .45 and shoved it at Leo. “Take this, too.”

“OK.” Leo gripped the gun by the barrel. The door shuddered as a slug made it through the dense wood and skipped off the concrete floor. “OK.” He exchanged a nod with Vin and crossed to the far wall.

A battered desk bore his weight long enough to smash the window out with the butt of Vin’s .45. Eye level with the sidewalk, Leo tossed the gun through the window frame and dragged his bulk out after it. Stubborn glass wedges gouged through his sweatshirt and carved red lines in his arms, chest, and back.

No one on the street. Leo grabbed the .45, this time by the grip, and got to his feet. A crash of wood came from the broken window at his feet, followed by a tasseled loafer stampede. Voices attacked each other; Leo heard Vin’s say fuck off. He trotted across the street.

*

His card table back up against the snot green bathroom door, Leo rolled his tearing eyes. “Fourth and third? Or third and fourth?” He stepped to the stained sink, flipped on the cold. Just a brown trickle. He wrapped his hands round the sink; his wet eyes found the spotted mirror. “Third and fourth or fourth and third?”

A choked flush from behind. Leo wheeled to face the opening stall door. A used up suit tottered to the other sink. He flipped his faucets, but got nothing. “Aw, shi—...Uh oh.” He jerked at the waist and filled the sink with puke.

Leo twisted away, sleeve over his nose and mouth. The bathroom door was open. Three men in sharp threads filled the frame. The flankers pointed guns. The one in the middle held out his hand. “Give me the thing. Dolan says maybe you walk again, if you do.”

Leo stepped back. The middle sharp did too, allowing the gunmen through the door. Leo’s hand moved to his sweatshirt, the thing on the other side of the soft material. The used up suit finished his puke and straightened up. His red-rimmed eyes narrowed at the gunmen. “What the fu—”

Leo slipped behind the puker, his back to the tile, hands braced on the cold radiator. He kicked up from the ground with both feet, put his size fifteens to the puker’s back and shoved him at the gunmen. One of them sidestepped, his piece clattering against the closed second stall. The other, eyes wide, fired his cradled nine. The bullet did a quick pass through the puker’s mouth, blew a flesh flower out the back of his neck, and shattered the little window over Leo’s head.

More glass. Leo turtled his neck to his shoulders and powered off the wall. He dipped his shoulder and caught the guy against the stall in the sternum, which cracked along with several of his ribs. His mouth a ring of stunned anguish, the guy dropped his piece and tumbled through the stall door. His hip hit the bowl, his head dented against the fixture, and he stopped moving.

Leo wheeled on the other guy, who was against the doorframe, the puker face down gurgling at his feet. He raised his nine. Leo grabbed his wrist, broke it, and rammed his elbow into the guy’s nose, spreading it across his face. He dropped the nine as his hands went up. Leo tossed him to the radiator.

The third guy, the talker, staggered back up the hallway. One hand traced the wall; the other searched the inside of his snazzy jacket. Leo made a lunge for him, but the toe of his Oxford snagged the puker’s deflated head and he went chest first into the doorframe.

The third guy cleared his piece, a little .22, and jabbed it out in front of him. Leo rolled off the doorframe into the bathroom. Three slugs whizzed past him into the near stall. Two hit the partition, the other caught the first gunman in the ass. He still didn’t move.

Leo slapped his forehead and jammed a hand in his sweatshirt. He pulled Vin’s chunky .45 and whipped it round the corner. The third guy froze, wrist limp, .22 dangling. Leo yanked the trigger.

Nothing. Safety.

The third guy ran. Leo switched his grip to the barrel and boomeranged the .45 down the hall. It nailed the guy in the back of the head and he spilled from the hallway into the dank barroom, sprawled out on his belly.

Leo thumped from the hallway to the prone guy, who stirred. Before he could get his hands under him, Leo brought the heel of his size fifteen down. The boot broke the guy’s neck; the hardwood broke his jaw.

Leo snatched the chunky .45 from between the third guy’s legs and leveled it at the skinny bartender who, along with the smattering of derelicts he served, had his back to the nearest wall, palms up. “It’s…it’s cool, man. No trouble. It’s cool.”

Leo wiped drool from his jaw. He stuffed the .45 in his sweatshirt and stumbled out into the streetlights, massaging his chest with four fingers. “Something about Parkhurst. North of Parkhurst? Fourth and Parkhurst?”

*

Leo sat opposite Sonia at the wobbly kitchen table, the thing between them, rays from the rising sun playing on it. Sonia’s eyes ping-ponged between the thing and Leo. “Is that really a—”

“Yep.” Leo’s buffalo head bobbed. “Nice, right?”

“Yes.” Her toes curled against the dirty linoleum. “Maybe we could just keep it a while.”

“No.” He waved his hands over the thing. “No, I have to get it to the fence. I just…” He pushed up from the table and wrapped his arms round the back of his head. “I just can’t remember where he’s at.”

Sonia’s eyes rolled as she took her coffee cup from the table and labored to her feet. She pulled her robe closed over her pregnant belly and poured stale joe into the sink. Her voice didn’t quite make it to Leo.

“Just once I wish you’d put us ahead of—”

The doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it.” Jimmy trotted from his closet bedroom to the door, his footed PJs shooshing up a wave of dust.

“I’ll get it.”

Sonia tossed a dishtowel over the thing. Leo stepped toward the door. “Ask who’s there, Jim.”

Jimmy twisted the knob between his palms and pulled the door open. A man limped into the room, an overcoat hanging from his bony frame.

Vin.

Sonia’s eyes flashed to Leo, who squinted, one hand extended, palm down. “You’re OK?”

“Been better.” Vin took the door from Jimmy with a gloved hand and eased it closed. “Turns out Dolan’s got a good on-the-spot doc.”

Leo cocked his head. “Dolan’s got…?”

Sonia took a step toward the kitchen table.

Vin watched her sidelong and stepped forward. “I got a new job.”

“New job?” Leo raised an arm toward the kitchen table. “But what about—”

“No, Leo!”

He looked to Sonia, who gripped her hair in both hands. The first shot put two holes in his heart. The second tunneled though his thick skull into his brain and settled there. Leo stumbled back with a vague look on his face and fell on his ass against the wall.

Vin crossed to the kitchen table, flipped the dishtowel aside and tucked the thing into his overcoat.

Her jaw slack, mouth working wordlessly, Sonia stood on her toes, the small of her back against the sink. Her robe fell open.

“Aw, fuck.” Vin shook his head at the big, round belly with a heavy sigh, then raised the silenced nine.

“Please!” Sonia’s arms surrounded her stomach. He shot her between the breasts.

He hobbled toward the door. Jimmy stood in front of it, a tear dangling to either side of his chin. “Why?”

Vin pressed the nine to the boy’s forehead. “Never leave a man down.”

BIO: Jason Chirevas has appeared in Hardboiled, A Twist of Noir, Pulp and Dagger, a Cyberpulp horror anthology, and in short, often irritated, missives on Twitter @JasonChirevas.

Interlude Stories Two-Fer: Richard Godwin

2012-01-18T09:46:00.000-06:00

THE LIARS OF THE LAUGHING CITY - RICHARD GODWIN
Previously published on this site on January 7, 2010

I waited for the sound to die down. The screaming had gone on all night, my first night in the Laughing City. I was there on a job, the remit to assassinate Artemus Lime.

No one had heard of him, and he had not been sighted since his murder of the president. Their lies dripped from their tongues like semen from a hooker. Not that I cared, another lying politician out of the way.

The case had been chewed over and effectively buried by the press, since it had coincided with the leak about the missing millions.

Yes, the president had siphoned off a sizeable chunk of the economy. So sizeable that the hungry mobs on the streets committed more murders in yet more savage fashion. Women were raped and mutilated, their body parts sold off to fast food chains that had no other supplies for the hamburgers the soup kitchens fed the workers on. The lies here were worse than those back home. The whole place stank of dead flesh and cover up.

The city was a mess. Anyone out after dark risked dismemberment. And thanks to the president, there was no police force. Only the extremely wealthy were protected by private security firms who shot on sight.

As the cold grey dawn rose like a leper, I looked out at the horizon of the Laughing City and wondered how it had got its name. I hadn’t heard laughter in years. Back home it was bomb blasts and bullshit.

I poured a protein drink and ran through the quickest way of finding and killing him. I’d start at the downtown bars. Lime had a reputation for liking prostitutes and there were some really tasty ones, I heard. The mutations which resulted from the last dirty bomb were endless and threw up some surprising sexual combinations, for those with a taste for that kind of thing.

Artemus Lime, bounty hunter and killer, space nomad and politicians’ whore. If the money was right he’d do it.

I’d heard he was a multi-hole man. I guess it beat golf.

I hired a shuttle downtown and watched as the light changed to that opaque, colourless fog that characterised the poorer parts. The stench of rotting flesh was overpowering. They still hadn’t cleaned up many of the body parts after the last explosion. Silver crows and lizard dogs scavenged in the trash for human parts, chasing each other for bits of spleen and ruptured kidney. The crows usually won, tearing strips from the dogs’ balls.

I found the place I was looking for, my only lead.

‘Horny Holes Fuck House’ loomed out at me beyond the spare rib kitchen. The carcasses hanging outside certainly didn’t look animal.

Felix Baw had been typically unforthcoming with me. I’d worked for him before and he came across as if he despised everyone he employed, giving them only the barest of facts about a case and expecting them to get on with it. Baw, child of the Laughing City.

I got out of the shuttle and a pimp in a white suit walked up to me.

‘Hole or hat? We got em all, juicy hole, multi-hole, can do a hat job if you like, drugs, have you tried free spurt? Come in, we got some inside, want to see my ladies?’

‘I’m looking for someone.’

‘Yeah, I got. Free spurt?’

‘I don’t need it.’

‘You try, you like. Guaranteed.’

I wasn’t about to blow my brains on a plutonium enriched smoke that would give me cosmic come and turn me into one of the gibbering wrecks I now saw walking toward me.

‘How about hat job?’

‘I thought it was illegal, even out here.’

‘We don’t blow all brain into hat for fuck, just some of it, use smaller hat so some brain go on floor, and dancer can do dirty stuff to em.’

I felt like hitting him. ‘Might as well sell a bag of warm vomit.’

‘I do good deal.’

‘I’m going in there,’ I said and pointed to the fuck house.

The pimp switched on his really upset look, but I wasn’t buying.

‘No. I got better ones, come see.’

I walked on, dodging the beggar.

Inside, it was dark and stank of mustard for some reason. Someone or something grabbed my arm.

‘Try me.’

Adjusting to the light, I made out a hybrid lady with several eyes and tits the size of rocket launchers.

‘I’m looking for someone,’ I said.

‘You find her,’ she said, wiggling her arse at me.

I showed her the picture.

‘Ooh, he real ugly. I no fuck with him,’ she said. ‘Come on, I give you good one.’

She was trying to drag me upstairs when a man dressed only in shorts and with a belly the size of a large animal kicked her so hard she jumped several feet in the air and crashed against the bar.

The blind barman dropped a glass and the only customer sitting there tried to help her up, grabbing hold of one of her tits by mistake.

‘Get off me, you fuck. You pay touch.’

‘Can I help?’ Fatso said.

‘I’m looking for this man,’ I said, and showed him the picture.

He rubbed his chin. ‘Mmm, look familiar. Yes, I have seen this man before. Now, where was it?’

I put a hundred then another one in his palm.

‘Much more for address,’ he said.

I kept throwing them at him, all expenses of course, and eventually he wrote it down on a slip of paper.

‘0 Screech Avenue.’

‘This it?’

‘Sure, why not?’ he said. ‘You go. See if I give you bad dose, come back fuck my ladies.’

‘Just one question.’

‘Yes?’

‘What’s that smell?’

He sniffed the air and then held his arms up. ‘What smell?’

‘Smells like mustard.’

He snorted. ‘Not mustard. P2.’

I was out of there and in the shuttle.

P2 had been developed by Panacea Drugs, which had a monopoly on all medical supplies. It was a chemical specifically designed to wipe out the smell of rotting flesh.

Horny Holes Fuck House should have had ‘Necrophiliacs Welcome’ in neon lights underneath it.

As it was, Screech Avenue turned out to be a good lead. Fatso had been worth the talk. Number 0 was harder to find, located just at the intersection of a shop selling weapons parts and a derelict house. From the street you couldn’t see it, camouflaged as all zeros were, hence their popularity. But when you looked from the air, there it was, all gleaming pole and glass metal.

I took the flier up and saw it the first time. That’s always the way with zeros, if you don’t see them straight off, they use their programmed disguises to throw you off the scent. Popular with all killers and politicians, they had been snatched up when first built and were prime real estate.

I wasn’t going to waste any more time than I had to.

I assembled an A1 bomb back at my hotel and returned at nightfall, just as the tribes were crawling out of the sewers.

The smell of shit and menses was overpowering and after checking to see if any lights were visible from the flier and deciding that even if Lime was in, he wouldn’t be that obvious, I just blew the door off.

Shards of glass and burning metal swept across the street like a tornado, catching in the flesh of the tribes who had now surfaced. Heads and limbs flew through the air as their mouths, stuffed with scraps of human meat, dropped their goodies on the floor and salivated long thick shreds of drool onto their wasted hands. They shrieked like slaughtered animals and ran back into their shelters.

I put out the blaze and entered his place.

Typical assassin’s pad: metal furniture and nothing on display. I mean nothing. Like a display hotel room. No pictures on the wall, no personal effects, save one: a monitor on the wall giving read outs of activity across the city. I flicked the screen: it was focused on the spaceport.

He knew I was here.

Back at my hotel I considered my options and knew that the lead was squandered. I decided to check out in the morning and go underground. This was going to take longer than expected, and I would need more expenses.

I tried Baw, but it was a no go.

Black-out had fallen down below: another terrorist strike.

Except that night, Lime came looking for me.

He obviously wanted this out of the way.

I knew he was a busy man and his services much in demand. I was in the bathroom when I heard the door open.

Through the crack in the sealant I saw his shape move against the wall. He was making his way into the bedroom. I engaged my weapon and crept out after him.

Just as I lined his head up, he turned and the blast caught his ear, shooting it off and making him jump. He leapt through the window and landed down below without difficulty. From the window I saw him disappear.

He had dropped something, a scrap of paper. It made interesting reading. It was a job sheet, ordering my assassination, signed by Felix Baw. Agent: Artemus Lime.

I knew what I had to do.

Staying underground was easy. Second nature. Finding Lime was harder.

And all the time the laughter got louder, more insistent.

At times as I paced the city I wondered whether it was more a cackle than a laugh. At other times it sounded like a guffaw, then it would trill into a melodious giggle, like a little girl’s. Sometimes in the middle of the night you would hear a booming laugh, then in the morning a gentle titter. The noise started to drive me crazy and I was no nearer to finding Lime.

Baw was inaccessible. No surprise there. I kept trying him so that he wouldn’t suspect I knew. The lies mounted up like spare flesh.

Then, one day, one of my leads paid off.

The owner of a weapons shop Lime used called me. I gave him the money and he showed me straight to him: in an apartment at the back of some government buildings.

Artemus Lime was a government man.

It all made sense.

The ease with which the President’s assassination had been forgotten, Baw’s sudden interest in hiring me. He’d made a lot since the assassination, and there was something I obviously knew which bothered him. What?

Meantime, I took care of Lime.

My source said he often took delivery at nights and after a few hours waiting, I watched as an armoured van arrived and two guys went in. After they left, I silently walked down the government corridors and stopped outside his flat. This time I would use a blaster. I had no questions to ask.

The A1 blew the door off, and I saw Lime jump up at the back of the flat and race toward his weapon. I shot him from the blazing doorway, a good first shot that took his head off, spraying brain matter and tissue right across the hallway. It was a pointillist effect and quite becoming to the apartment, which needed a little cheering up, all metal surfaces and nothing homey about it.

As I walked over to him, Lime lay twitching like an insect in a pool of blood. One arm reached uselessly across the wet floor. I think he was looking for his head, which lay in bits several feet away. You only get one shot at me, and he failed. His neck was still showering the flat and it was a little messy, so I just burned him up and looked around the place for any evidence which might be useful, but found nothing.

‘Bye, Lime,’ I said. ‘Can’t shut your door, but I guess they’ll find you in the morning. Hope the tribes enjoy what’s left of you. I don’t know if they like it barbecued.’

I spent one more night in the Laughing City, convinced that the noise was getting louder.

That is, apparently, one of its effects, the volume.

It’s personal, you see, a strangely hallucinogenic experience.

Some people hear a titter, some a whine, but it’s different every time. It doesn’t always start with laughter, as with me. After the screaming, the laughter came at first as a welcome relief. But then it got louder and louder until by the last night it just sounded like an audience roaring at a joke I’d missed.

I went out for dinner and every road echoed with it. At times obscene, at times gentle, it followed me like a beggar.

The waiter must have noticed my disquiet. As I paid, he said, ‘Everything all right, sir?’

‘That obvious?’ I said.

‘Food no good?’

‘Food was fine. It’s the laughter that’s getting me down.’

‘Oh, you get used to it. Tribes are out tonight.’

‘How?’

‘How what?’

‘How do you get used to it? Why the Laughing City?’

‘You don’t know? Oh, well, after the war, you know the old one, when the first wave of mutants were created, the noise at night was terrible. Screaming, choking, all night, drove you mad. When people first heard them scream, they didn’t know how they could make so much noise. You take a good look at the tribes tonight when you leave here. Most tourists don’t see them, but have a good long look at them. The noise was terrible, the screaming as they found survivors and dismembered them, tore them apart, flesh scattering everywhere, disgusting, never have that in my restaurant. So they keyed it in.’

‘The laughter?’

He nodded.

‘They run it on a loop. Sometimes, when the tribes are quiet it go down. And sometimes, it get louder and louder when they really tear bodies apart. Then the noise is much worse, you prefer the laughing if you stay here, believe me.’

‘It’s a disc,’ I said.

‘We need tourist. Tourist like it.’

On my way back to my hotel, I saw a tribe descend onto the street like a pack of animals. Their teeth were red with the proceeds of their night’s feasting, blood dripping from their fangs and splattering the road. They’d obviously been on a feeding frenzy, and must have found fresh supplies, even though I hadn’t heard any blasts, but then the laughter would have covered it up. Chunks of flesh were scattered around the street like debris, and as I got into the shuttle, I had a good look. I’d seen the fangs, but there was something I’d missed: not obvious, especially since you only ever got to see them in the gloom of nightfall.

It was as the shuttle sped away that one of them turned its head and that was when I saw it: they had no ears. The mutations had left them without hearing. Only something stone deaf could scream like that.

Now I knew why it was called the Laughing City.

I spent a final night in it, driven mad by the noise and left the next morning.

The silence back home was a welcome relief, and as I got the news, Baw’s plan made sense.

He had financed his own army, a bunch of renegades mostly, and was rounding up all vagrants and criminals and sending them off to the camps. That was why he wanted me dead: I’d worked for him before and he was always a satisfied customer, inasmuch as satisfaction was discernible in the limited range of his human responses. But my criminal record from the old regime was the blot in my copybook and he wanted it to go away.

Baw had plans, all right, and the President had been sitting in his chair.

I knew most of the recruits, having trained and worked with them. I also knew they were mercenaries and only wanted the money. The army was in its infancy and hadn’t even got running yet. But it needed to be stopped.

I knew these guys and knew they had no loyalty to Baw.

And so I took him out.

Guys like him are easy. They never see it coming. He didn’t even know I was back.

I marched right into his office, past the secretary who always waved me on, and found him seated at his desk. Looking up from his computer, he let out a gasp. Even his shock looked like a lie.

‘Surprise,’ I said, and blew his brains across the four walls, leaving them to dry a little.

I collected my pay from his bank account, which took a little hacking into to get, and then proceeded to issue instructions from his office to disband the army.

They all got paid, of course, with a little bonus.

And that’s how I got to keep my friends on my return from the Laughing City.

RETURN TO THE LAUGHING CITY - RICHARD GODWIN

Previously published at Thrillers, Killers N Chillers on March 2, 2011

I was trying on one of the newest suits.

I strapped it on like armour, standard mechanized metals mined from the Azure Fields.

It felt like an Iron Maiden without the spikes.

I never needed that kind of protection, a kill’s a kill, wearing that shit was like fucking with a condom, playing the piano with gloves on.

I took it off and handed it back to the bounty salesman. They were amassing weapons for the new breed of assassins. I thought they were a bunch of pussies.

If you don’t like blood don’t take the job.

I needed to feel every vibration, every fluctuation in the kill, like the tremors in a lover’s body and soul.

I went outside and stared at the Azure Fields.

A pale blue ghost in some hallucination.

They blew in the wind that kicked up from nuclear fall out when the punctured sun bled.

It had a certain poetry, a half orange dripping red from a broken skyline. Beyond it you could see the event horizon of an imploding supernova.

Nothing was real in this desert of scars and broken humanity.

I looked out at the wounded horizon, it felt like witnessing a rape behind reinforced glass.

You want to punch your way through it but your knuckles are bleeding.

This place will strip the flesh from you and chisel your bones.

I thought about the assignment.

Baw had been long forgotten when I took the job.

I’d been smoking a few renegades out and handing them in to local government bureaus where they just shuffled papers and threw them back in the water with a few more scars than they already had.

I’d got my own army by now and these men were hungry for killing.

I’d kept them since I assassinated Artemus Lime.

When I put the suit on I didn’t expect to be going back to the Laughing City.

But then I knew not to expect a fucking thing from the cold comfort farm of my life.

If I was going back I was going naked.

I wanted to move with the air on my skin.

*

Jarves Long was a fat cat businessman.

He was part tetronium, the new metal that guys were smoking because it gave them erections that lasted for a year.

Painful flaming unrelieved hard ons they could only alleviate by mass fucking.

Panacea Drugs was behind it and once again hadn’t banked on its side effects.

What the fuck did they care?

The hookers were happy, wives less so. I’d made a load of money buying shares in KY Jelly.

It was such sweet pleasure to see their value rocket while men with obscene bulges ran amok in the streets.

The air was full of the acrid smell of spent semen for weeks on end.

Long spent little time with me in his air conditioned office.

He looked like a fat walrus. There was something wrong with his face.

‘I want you to remove this man,’ he said, sliding a photograph across the table at me.

I knew who he was.

‘You serious?’

‘Do I look like I’m joking?’ he said, scratching his prick.

‘You want me to kill Manuel Blaize?’

He met my comment with a blank stare.

I looked at his face and realised what was missing. He had no eyelashes.

‘Why do you want him dead?’ I said.

‘Let’s say he has reneged on a deal and is a threat.’

Outside, in the lift on the way down, I thought it through.

Manuel Blaize was the nastiest killer you’ll ever meet.

Face covered in scars, Mexican, army trained, half android, liked eating the brains of his victims and good with a knife.

I headed up to the Laughing City.

I had my flame gun with me and my usual array of weapons, hardcore killing machines that can do the job just right depending on the situation and the man.

Always read your man, that’s the way you get to clean up in this business.

If you get him wrong, you’re wasting your time.

I like shootings best, a quick shot, spurt of blood and home.

Home is where the empty metal surfaces are, the lack of human life, an assassin’s pad.

Like a hotel room built for fast exits and entrances.

I live in a theatre of the macabre, and I count the bodies.

I wanted to scalp Blaize.

He’d killed so many men I knew.

I also promised a friend a little something from the Laughing City.

Lynn Queen was after some Crow and I knew just how to hand it to her.

She’d been brave enough to expose the lies of the system down below and I wanted to give her something back, even if she was a Royalist.

I arrived in the City as mercury rained from the sky.

It was crazier than the last time.

The light flickered orange and red like a deranged traffic light and the Lizard Dogs and Silver Crows were out.

I watched one fly off with the mangled remnants of a dog’s penis in its mouth, sit on a burned out car and tear it piecemeal with its claws.

I headed to the hotel where I began my search.

I found two locations for Blaize, one where he met his recruits, young Mexican militaries who would kill anyone for the right money, the other a whorehouse he used.

My hacking showed me he also liked Drip02, the new hallucinogenic drug, a million times more powerful than LSD.

He’d shoved some up a whore’s cunt and performed a little operation with his knives.

As I was about to leave Long messaged me.

‘Dispose of the body,’ was all he said.

I passed by the River HaHa, filled with aborted foetuses. These were the mutated terminations of hookers’ encounters with some of the more extreme customers of the City.

From time to time one of them would float to the surface with a distended hand or an eyeball the size of a blood orange popping out of a collapsed head.

I got a shuttle and headed to Blaize’s headquarters.

It was black there, no light and I figured I’d go in.

Nothing except empty space the size of a hangar.

Blaize never left any trace, he killed with precision.

I left.

As I made my way back I bent to check the time and felt something hiss by my ear.

I ducked and saw one of his knives land in the side of a Lizard Dog.

It ripped right through it spilling a mile of coiled and swirling guts on the menses strewn pavement.

I turned and saw Blaize’s scarred face vanish.

I made my way back as the laughter started that night.

It was worse than the last time.

It was as if an audience were screaming insanely at a joke.

A high pitched whine of a cacophony of deranged hilarity took over the air waves until I made my hotel room and closed the door.

I was going to kill him tonight.

I got my flare gun and my A1 which can shoot through reinforced steel.

I ate some powdered heart and made my way to the blood bath.

*

The Tripped Out Fuck House lay at the edge of the City.

It was the last stop beyond the Whore’s Hole.

The driver wouldn’t take me there and I had to walk.

Some mutant hookers were strutting past some garbage that spilled onto the broken road.

I could make out the tip of the desert beyond the City, the place where no one goes.

‘Fuck me any way you want,’ one of them said.

She wore neon boots and a skirt the size of a rag and put her hand inside herself as she licked her face with her ten inch tongue.

‘It’s OK I’ve eaten,’ I said.

The other one approached me, swaying with what I assumed was intended to be an erotic gesture, although she looked like she desperately needed to pee.

Her eyes were made with beaded jewels and she pulled out an obscenely large breast.

‘I can clean the floor with my clit while hanging from the ceiling,’ she said.

‘I have a cleaner, thank you.’

They squealed with obscenities as I passed them.

The Tripped Out Fuck House was busy.

I don’t know what was worse, the fact that they used lights that turned everything yellow or that they were playing Black Lace.

Even in a good mood, Agadoo made me want to kill.

Its popularity in the Laughing City stemmed from the fact that it encouraged tourists to dance obscenely and make merry, like some grotesque backdrop to the endless tapes of the chuckles and guffaws.

A couple of whores laid their sweating hands on me.

‘You want some wet snatch?’ one of them said.

‘No, I’m just here to push pineapple, shake the tree.’

‘Don’t you like us?’ the other one said.

‘I met a hula mistress somewhere in Waikiki.’

I edged past the whores and disappeared up the back staircase.

I’d checked out the layout and it was simple.

The fuck rooms were upstairs.

I’d timed it right, Blaize had gone in earlier and downed a huge dose of Drip02.

I disturbed a few fucks and found him in a room with a glitter ball hanging from the ceiling.

He was fucking a whore up the ass while another one sprayed him with come.

They saw me. He saw a series of mutant animals and began throwing knives, and as the whores ran out I incinerated him. I fried him to a crisp.

Then I shot him for good measure.

I held my gun against his ravaged face, pushed deep into a cicatrix the shape of a swollen gash and blew his head apart.

I looked around the room.

Shards of obscenities lay among the waste and used condoms, dildoes of all shapes and specifications adorned the fuck room.

Blaize’s jaw bone hung dripping from the glitter ball like a detumescent penis.

And I dragged his smoking body down the back stairs and into the street.

His skin looked like it was covered in burnt potato chips and syphilitic scabs.

Outside mercury rained from the sky and bombed and ricocheted like malign stars falling from a hole in time.

The whores were gone, the Dogs and Crows were out and they were not in a good mood.

I watched a Crow peck a Dog’s eyeball from his head. He squawked in wild delirium.

I walked to the edge of the River Haha dragging Blaze’s body on the ruined ground.

His skin was falling from his bones and lay lodged with chunks of flesh that were skewered on the sharp stones.

The sound was deafening now, the laughter had been turned up full volume.

I leaned down and scalped Blaize, running my razor sharp knife in a perfect circle round his skull and peeling it away like a label.

‘Well, looks like you lost this one,’ I said.

The old assassin’s methods are the best.

I took one last look at his bleeding head, and using the knife he had tucked in his pocket, cut his stomach open, releasing all the gases. Then I tied some rocks and waste metal to him.

‘Can’t have you floating,’ I said.

I threw him in the red and foaming water and watched him sink below the decayed foetuses that hovered like deformed nightmares on the black current.

Then I returned to my hotel where I packed.

I wrote ‘invoice’ on Blaize’s scalp with a marker pen.

As I made my way to the space port I stopped in the street and took a shot of a Silver Crow.

Back home I went to get my money from Long.

‘Good job,’ he said, sliding the cash across his desk.

‘A little present for you,’ I said.

I’ll never forget his face when I laid Blaize’s scalp on his desk.

He had the outraged shock of a meat eater who has never seen an animal slaughtered.

His lashless eyeballs stared into space.

I paid a visit to Lynn and gave her the shot.

She looked down at it and seemed unable to remove her gaze from it.

‘You’re not avoiding eye contact, are you?’ I said.

I could see she was delighted.

Her efficiency never failed to amaze me.

She put it on the cover of her magazine the next day.

I invested my money in some new weapons.

I began training my army for what I had in mind.

BIO: Richard Godwin is the author of crime novel Apostle Rising, in which a serial killer is crucifying politicians and recreating the murder scenes of an original case. The novel has received great reviews.

It has just sold foreign rights to the largest publisher in Hungary.

He is widely published in many magazines and anthologies and also writes horror and Bizarro as well as literary fiction and poetry. You can find out more about him here. His Chin Wags At The Slaughterhouse are popular and penetrating interviews he conducts with other authors at his Blog.

His second crime novel, Mr. Glamour will be published in April of this year by Black Jackal Books as a paperback.

Interlude Stories: Katherine Tomlinson

2012-01-17T09:54:00.000-06:00

SEX CRIME - KATHERINE TOMLINSON

The door to 308 was ajar when I arrived but that wasn’t unusual. A lot of clients liked to pounce, playing out some fucked up power trip-rape fantasy that would end with me face down on the bed, my hands bound with a novelty tie the clients’ kids had given him for Christmas.

Whatever. It’s their dime.

But as I pushed the door to the suite all the way open, the wrongness hit me. I knew what I would find in the bedroom even before I whiffed the blood and shit.

Finding a man dead in my bed is actually not that uncommon. It happens often enough that the agency inserts some specific verbiage about it in the waiver the clients all sign without reading.

Men with weak hearts are advised to seek release elsewhere. Not everyone has the stamina for a session with a succubus and the agency charges a two-hour minimum.

The men who’ve died on me all died with smiles on their faces. This guy was not so lucky. He’d been torn apart, his throat ripped out, his face gnawed to the bone.

There would have been more blood on the bed but the plastic shower curtain laid on top of the coverlet had caught most of it..

Guess the dead guy was into water sports.

I texted my driver, hoping to catch him before he headed off to the nearest Tommy’s Burger to refuel. Man’s got an appetite like a teenage weight lifter.

“Curtis?” I said when he answered. “I need you to get up to room 308 right away.”

I ended the call without saying goodbye, which was rude, but I was distracted by the sight of the dead guy. I don’t have a problem with most bodily fluids but I’m squeamish about blood.

Curtis was upstairs in less than three minutes.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

I just waved him toward the bedroom door.

Curtis took one look at the stiff and said, “Vampire.”

“Ya think?” I said, and instantly regretted my sarcasm when I saw his wounded look. Curtis is a baby-faced hublin who’d inherited his mortal mother’s sensitive nature along with his father’s prehistoric bulk.

“Is it still here?” I asked.

He sniffed and shook his head. “He’s gone.”

We both looked at the dead guy on the bed.

“We better call the boss,” Curtis said.

“No,” I said, more vehemently than I intended.

“She’s still mad at me for offering all those freebies at Comic-Con last year,” I explained.

Curtis smirked. “Geek love.”

I shrugged sheepishly. Curtis has been driving me around for a year. He knows what I like.

He gave me another dubious look.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t call Lady Lilith?”

“I’ll lose my job,” I said. “And you’ll end up driving Sidonie around.”

He grimaced. “Not the Frog Princess.”

“Your choice.”

We both fell silent.

“Are there security cameras in the hallway?” Curtis asked suddenly.

“I sincerely hope not,” I said. Vampires don’t show up on cameras but succubi certainly do. If someone connected my arrival with a guest’s death, I’d be on my way to Parker Center faster than you can say Joran Van der Sloot.

“Okay,” Curtis said finally. “I’m going to call Zeno.”

I groaned. I hate ghouls and Zeno’s the kind of ghoul who gives the breed a bad name.

“Do you have to?”

Curtis paused in his dialing, giving my question serious consideration. “I think we do, Desiree.”

I gave him a wave of acceptance and went to the bathroom to splash some cold water on my face. I could hear Curtis through the open door.

“Hey, Zeno, it’s Curtis. You got time for some work?”

Apparently the answer was “yes” because Curtis began negotiating prices. At one point he put his hand over the receiver and asked me, “What do you think the guy weighs, Des? One-eighty? One-ninety?”

“About that,” I said.

“Okay, you need to bring three of your boys,” Curtis said into the phone. “And Zeno? Come hungry.”

Zeno and his crew arrived in half an hour, looking surprisingly mortal, which meant they were shelling out big bucks to buy black-market glamour that would let them pass for human. I shuddered at the thought.

Zeno saw me sitting on the couch as he came through the door and gave me a toothy grin.

“Looking good, Des.”

Before I could say anything, Curtis interrupted.

“He’s back here,” he said.

“Lead the way,” Zeno said and he and his boys traipsed into the bedroom and closed the door behind them.

Even through the door, we could hear the sounds of their feasting. Ghouls are not dainty eaters.

They came out an hour later, one of Zeno’s boys picking his teeth with a splinter of bone.

Curtis looked him over.

“You’ve got a little...” He indicated a sloppy bit of red on the ghoul’s chin.

“Thanks,” the ghoul said as he wiped it off with his thumb and then licked it clean.

I wanted to hurl.

Zeno was amused.

“Hey, Desiree,” he said.

I turned.

Zeno was smirking.

“You suck.”

“Eat me, Zeno,” I replied, which perhaps wasn’t the snappiest rejoinders under the circumstances, but he just laughed and left with the wad of cash Curtis had given him.

Curtis and I spent the next hour cleaning up. I rinsed the shower curtain and hung it back up while Curtis bundled up the guy’s clothes in a tight ball and put them in a souvenir bag from Disneyland he found in the guy’s closet. We stuffed that into the guy’s suitcase along with everything else we found in the room.

I anchored a couple of twenties under the room key and took a last look around.

“We cool?” Curtis asked.

“Chilly,” I said.

Curtis picked up the suitcase as I turned out the lights.

I tried not to look guilty as hell as we headed for the elevator.

Just in case there were cameras.

There was almost no traffic and Curtis had me home before midnight.

“Thanks, Curtis,” I said and kissed him on his leathery cheek. “You’re my hero.” His normally greenish complexion flushed bright pink. He looked so adorable that, what the hell, I gave him a freebie.

I was drifting off to sleep beneath my freshly laundered Pratesi sheets when my phone rang. I looked at the caller ID and my blood froze.

Lilith.

Fuck.

I reached for the phone.

“Hi, Lilith,” I said as calmly as I could.

“What the fuck happened tonight?” she asked. Lilith never swears, so it was a very bad sign that she had dropped the F-bomb.

“What do you mean?” I asked because what else was I going to say?

“I just got a call from the client asking where you were.”

Not what I was expecting.

“Where I was?” I echoed faintly.

“The hotel’s only got five floors, Desiree. It can’t be that hard to find room 303.”

Room 303?

“Room 303? I thought the appointment was in room 308?”

“You met some guy in 308?” she asked suspiciously. “Were you working off the books?”

What?

“No.”

There was a long silence on the other end of the phone.

“You know what, Desiree? This is unacceptable.” She sighed heavily. “You’re not the only succubus in town, you know.”

“I’m sorry, Lilith.”

She didn’t say anything.

I thought for a minute.

“I can be back at the hotel in half an hour.”

Still nothing.

“Tell him I’ll include any two extra services for free.”

“Okay,” she said finally. “But, hon? The whole fee comes to me.”

“No problem,” I said.

“There’d better not be,” she said and hung up.

“Fuck,” I said out loud and wondered if I’d have time to wash my hair.

Interlude Stories: Chris Rhatigan

2012-01-16T10:31:00.000-06:00

LUCKY CONVENIENCE - CHRIS RHATIGAN

Old, shabby men like Tony Marcello came into Lucky Convenience every day. They’d rattle off their lotto numbers and demand a pack of Merits or Chesterfields or Viceroys.

They’d sort through the losing and forgotten tickets other customers left strewn around by the soda fountain or the garbage can. They’d ask me to run those tickets through the machine. “You never know,” they always said.

They’d use one hundred-and-sixteen pennies to buy a cup of coffee.

They’d stink up the place with their farts.

They’d complain I was too slow with the numbers. Like they have so much important shit to do they can’t spare five seconds. They’re the ones pissing away hours a day on something they don’t want.

I’m serious. They don’t even want to win—you ever heard of a happy lottery winner?

Not that it made any difference. None of them ever won anything substantial.

Until Tony Marcello.

*

When Tony didn’t show up that morning, I would’ve bet a week’s paycheck he was dead. It was the first time in my five years at Lucky Convenience that he had missed either of his two daily visits—6 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.

But he made his 1:30. Pulled up in a sparkling, navy blue Cadillac Deville that had magically replaced his Oldsmobile. He still wore those same gruel-colored trousers yanked up to his nipples and the paper-thin polyester shirt dotted with grease stains.

He was whistling “My Way” when he strolled in, a cigarette tucked behind his ear. No one else was in the store. He picked up a dozen cans of mini Vienna sausages—78 cents a pop—and plopped them on the counter.

Already living it up. Usually he only got one.

“So, you went up to Lottery HQ this morning?”

“Yesterday.” He pointed outside at his new car like I hadn’t seen it. “This morning I put a down payment on that hot little number.”

“What’d you hit? Few numbers on Powerball?”

He shook his head, smacked his fleshy lips and smiled carefully. “Cash Five, my good man. Hit it right on the nose. Two hundred thousand simoleons.”

“Holy shit.”

Biggest winner we’d had before was a measly grand. Mr. Chang, the store’s owner, whined that the 7-11 up the street got all the big winners. Lottery players being a bunch of superstitious morons, they all flocked to the spot dishing out the winning tickets.

“Yessiree,” Tony said. He handed me a folded up sheet that listed all of his numbers and stabbed it a couple of times with his forefinger. “I’ll take five on every one. Figure I gotta ride this thing.”

I printed the tickets, presented them to him in a neat little stack, bagged his cans of sausage and preemptively pulled his two Viceroy soft packs.

Usually I’m not much in the way of customer service, but I wanted to pave the way for a hefty tip.

“And for giving me that winning ticket,” Tony said, “here’s a little something for you.”

He flipped through a fat roll of bills and removed a crisp Hamilton.

“Gee, thanks. You’re a regular Mother Teresa.”

“No problem. See, TJ, you stick with me, good things happen.”

Apparently, he didn’t get sarcasm.

“So, your numbers won, huh?” I asked.

“Nah, it was a quick pick.”

“I don’t remember giving you a quick pick.”

“Maybe it was over at the 7-11.” He shrugged. “I gotta hit the road. Buy me some new clothes. Maybe a new wife, too.”

He left. I went to the back office and checked the newspaper from the day before.

Winning numbers for Cash Five: 12-7-3-22-36.

Tony was full of shit. He scavenged that ticket—someone else had played those numbers and left the ticket on the counter or dropped it on the sidewalk, and Tony picked it up. He might have gotten away with it if the ticket had been a quick pick—numbers the machine randomly assigned—or a scratch-off.

But those numbers belonged to someone. And that someone was U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Charles Basilone.

*

I thought it basic human decency to at least warn Tony. For years Basilone had played his wife’s birthday, his daughter’s birthday, and his age. The Sergeant would be expecting at least a cut of Tony’s winnings.

But Tony didn’t want to hear it. Said Basilone could go fuck himself. If he wanted the cash, he should’ve held onto the ticket.

Doesn’t work like that. Told him he should know better than anyone—people who play numbers own those numbers. And Basilone, he was polite and whatever, but he still had that high-and-tight haircut and hit the range every weekend. You didn’t want to fuck with him.

“Just give Basilone something, anything,” I said. “A token of your appreciation.”

“All right, all right,” Tony said.

But he was analyzing the racing form. Like everyone else, he didn’t listen to a word I said.

*

I was on an opening shift about three weeks later. I got there and Tony was waiting for me outside in one of his god-awful new suits, a sherbet orange number with cream pinstripes. He even had a cane that looked like it was made of elephant tusk.

He’d probably already blown through six figures of his winnings.

“Where ya been?” he said. “Thought I was gonna have to bust in and print the numbers myself.”

“I overslept. Luckily your suit was in the neighborhood to wake me up.”

I unlocked the door and started a pot of coffee. The buzzing fluorescent overhead lights made me squint. I flipped on the lottery machine and took a seat on the stool behind the counter.

I was punching in his numbers for the midday drawing when I heard the door buzz.

A guy wearing a John McCain mask pulled a handgun out his leather jacket.

He didn’t say anything. He didn’t hesitate. He shot Tony from a few feet away.

I ducked behind the counter. More gunshots. I wasn’t going to bother telling him to take the cash from the register. I knew that wasn’t what he was after.

The door buzzed again. I peeked over the counter. Everything was exactly the same, except Tony was crumpled up like a used tissue, his orange-and-cream suit soaked in blood.

I ran outside. Drizzle and cold. The parking lot was empty. My ears screamed and the acrid smell of gunfire clung to my nostrils.

I didn’t want to go back in, so I got in my car. Watched the beads of water collect on the windshield and roll down. I turned the car on but left the heater off. It would have just spewed cold air.

I backed out and left. Turned on the windshield wipers but they kept squeaking, so I turned them off.

Returned to my dungeon—a mold-filled basement apartment with a crusty beige carpet. I parked it in a recliner, worked my way through a six pack, watched reruns of Judge Joe Brown.

Nodded off in the early afternoon. Woke up cold and nauseous. Barely made it to the toilet bowl and vomited for what felt like an hour. Thought I would feel better after but I didn’t. No matter how many times I brushed my teeth, it still felt like they were coated in grime.

Mr. Chang left at least a dozen voicemails on my cell. “Where are you? Why you miss your shift?” Shit like that.

Far as I’m concerned, he can take that seven-dollar-an-hour job and blow it out his ass.

BIO: Chris Rhatigan is the editor of All Due Respect and the co-editor of the crime anthology Pulp Ink. A collection of his stories, Watch You Drown, will be published by Pulp Metal Fiction. If you dig short fiction, stop by his blog, Death by Killing.

Interlude

2012-01-12T12:36:00.000-06:00

Richard Godwin has a new Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse up and his subject this time is the one and only R.S. Bohn.

Becky and I are good friends on the internet (having never met in the flesh before) and we discuss quite a lot and in wide ranges but there is some stuff that Richard got out of her that even I did not know.

Another great interview by Richard and intriguing and insightful answers by Becky.

Check it out.

Interlude Stories: Jason Chirevas

2012-01-11T13:21:00.000-06:00

MADDIE - JASON CHIREVAS

City like any other. I rolled into town on Friday with a thing to do. I had an address and a time. The address was round the corner, the time was not yet. I ducked into Dick’s Tap between second and third.

*

“What do ya have?”

She’d definitely been around the block, but there was still something left behind all the bad sex and light 100s. Her body hadn’t gone too far downhill. I gave her a smile and grabbed a fistful of peanuts. “Just these for now.”

“Suit yourself, but you’re taking up a lot of my bar.” She moved to a guy who looked like his golden parachute tore halfway to the street.

I gave her another smile. She paid it back halfway and took the golden shlub's order. I crushed the shells in my fist and dropped the mess on the bar. Looked at myself in the mirror over the backboard as I snacked. She was right; I was two stools wide, at least. Used to be I was muscle from elbow to elbow. Now, not as much.

Shells never stood a chance, though.

I used the mirror to take in the scene behind me. The bar looked like the place everybody used to go. More empty tables by half. Old jukebox was dusty and unplugged. I shared the bar with the shlub, two off-duty hookers down the far end, and a guy looked like he’d been there since the flood slumped over near the can. Couple ceiling fans moved dust and mumbly chatter around the room. Depressing.

“Know what you want?” She was in front of me again. “Or do I have to move the peanuts and call the bouncer?”

Unless the pile of sorry dude near the can was the bouncer, I was pretty sure she was kidding. And flirting. “Scotch and soda.”

“You got it.” She smiled, hand wandered under the bar. “Didn’t think I’d have that? I run a high class joint here.”

So high class there’s only one brand of Scotch. I showed her my palms. “Just doing what I’m told, ma’am.”

She flicked me my drink with the backs of four fingers. I downed it and nodded she hit me again. She did. I gulped it down and nodded over my shoulder. “Busy night?”

“Actually, yeah.” She raised the bottle, but I covered my glass. “This’s the Friday night rush these days.”

“Sorry to hear that.” I winked and got another smile. She’d be a good lay I thought, in that kind of used, broken-in way.

I glanced at my watch. She cocked an eyebrow. “Got somewhere to be?”

“Yeah.” I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. High class joint with no napkins. “But not yet.”

“Ah.” She pulled my peanut shells to the floor with a rag from over her shoulder.

I folded my hands on the bar. “So, you got a name?” I nodded at the fluttering neon sign over her shoulder. “You don’t look like a Dick.”

Another smile, a giggle too. “Cute. Dick kicked. I never met him. I’m Madelyn. Maddie.”

“My pleasure, Maddie.” I offered my hand and we shook. I got a good look at her tits when she bent over. Decent. Her hand told me she was about thirty-five. I’d guessed older.

*

Two sets of footsteps entered Dick’s Tap. Guys, one pretty big. The steps came straight for the bar. I glanced at the backboard mirror. The big one was younger, the other guy skinny and gray. Big wrapped tight in an overcoat, hands stuffed in his pockets. Skinny wore a blue suit. Standard mob protection team.

They were right next to the golden shlub, between him and me. At the register, Maddie watched the backboard mirror through her eyebrows. She knew them. I traced a fingertip round the rim of my empty glass.

Skinny slapped the bar, his fat ring made more noise than his bony hand. “Oh! Wake up, darlin’. We come about the thing.”

Maddie slammed the register drawer shut and turned to face them, hips against the backboard, hands on it. Her eyes darted to me for a fraction before she spoke. “I know why you come. I don’t have it yet.”

“I don’t like hearin’ that.” Skinny ran his hand along the bar, the fat ring rolling between his knuckles. He looked up at his partner. “You like hearing that?”

Big answered out the side of his mouth. “Nope.”

“Yeah, see.” Skinny pointed at Big. “When he don’t like what he hears, we got problems. We don’t want problems. Give us the thing.”

“I told you.” Maddie’s eyes were hard, but so was her swallow. “I don’t have it yet. I need more time.”

Behind me, chair legs scraped the floorboards. Seems the clientele knew a protection racket when they saw one. The whores down the end of the bar were wise too, but sticking it out. The pile of pickled dude near the can remained motionless.

A little air went out of me when the golden shlub raised a trembling hand. “Eh-excuse me, miss. Can I just have my bill?”

Skinny cooked the shlub with a slow burn. His hand rested on the bar, but he pointed at Maddie. “We’re talking to the lady, pal. Wait your turn.”

The golden shlub found his voice, but his eyes never left Maddie’s beltline. “I know, I’m sorry. I just want...”

Skinny’s fat ring ripped into the golden shlub’s cheek. The impact of the backhand slap knocked him off his stool. The shlub went down like a tranqed buffalo. His comb-over flopped open, one shirttail out exposing his pale gut. The shlub lay in the grime, holding his cheek and whimpering.

“My father bothering you fellas?” I kept my eyes on my empty glass.

They turned to me, Skinny craning his neck round his partner. “How’s that?”

“My dad.” I folded my hands on the bar. “He givin’ you boys a hard time?”

I watched them in the backboard mirror through my eyebrows. Skinny looked from me to the shlub, back to me. “Your father? He don’t look any older than you.”

“My cousin, then.” I looked at them for the first time. “He bothering you?”

Big stared at me with a bit of a smirk. Skinny stepped round him. “What’re you doing, friend? Gettin’ involved?”

I swiveled to face him, hands still folded, elbow on the bar. “I just wondered why you’re giving my cousin a hard time when it’s his birthday today.”

Skinny glanced at Big and smiled. “His birthday?”

“Yep.” I waved a finger between my empty glass and the shlub’s. “We were having a drink to celebrate.” I refolded my hands.

Skinny, grinning, leaned on the bar. “Why ain’t you sittin’ together?”

I looked him up and down. I didn’t look at Big. “Don’t want to look like a couple of fags, do we?”

They took a step apart.

The hookers down the end laughed. Maddie pressed a fist to her lips.

Skinny regained his grin and wagged a finger at me. “Good one, pal. Now mind your business, hah?” He turned back to Maddie.

Big hadn’t taken his eyes off me. “I ain’t no fag.”

As soon as he spoke, Skinny’s head dropped and his eyes closed for an instant.

I let my eyes slide to Big for the first time. “No?”

Big’s tongue flicked round his lips. “No.”

He was a bulky kid. Twenty-four or so, probably someone’s nephew. Pretty wide through the shoulders, but his trench strained round his middle. Soft belly or a beer gut under there. Ex-jock. I tilted my head toward the bar and puckered my lower lip. “Coulda fooled me.”

He was in my face. Skinny tried to stop him, but the kid walked right through him. Big stood over me with his hands still in his pockets, lots of movement in the left one. “Get up and say that.”

I carry a gun. Big one. Make your dick shrivel just looking at it. It’s thick, it’s nickel-plated, and I’ve never used it as a civilian.

Big’s charge left me looking at a button on his overcoat. I let my eyes wander up to his. “No need to get up. I see you just fine from here.”

“You think you’re somebody, old man?” He talked to my mouth. “Get up.”

I turned back to my empty glass. “You don’t want that.”

“Fuck I don’t.” He nudged my right arm with his left. “Get up.”

On my feet. Game face. “Alright, so I’m up. Now what, flower pot? Think high school football and a couple date rapes stack up to where I been?”

He took two steps back before I finished talking. I was a head taller than him and twice as wide in the best places. “Fuck you.” The pudge in his cheeks and under his chin quivered.

His left arm tensed, hand shaking in his pocket. I closed the gap between us to half an inch. “Go ahead, jerk it. Or I’ll make you jerk me.”

By this time, Skinny had pulled the golden shlub back onto his stool and dropped a few crunched bills on the bar. Big looked to Maddie for an escape. “You got two more days, bitch.”

I wrapped my hand round Big’s jaw with room to spare. I forced his eyes to mine. “Don’t turn away from a man when he talks to you, baby fat.” I gouged my thumb into the meat behind his jawbone. “It’s not ladylike.” His hands came out of his pockets to slap at my grip. I love pressure points. “Clear?”

Tears streamed down Big’s face as he whined something in a high pitch. I reached into his left trench pocket, pulled his piece, a lousy .38, and flipped it onto the bar in front of Maddie. “That’s the lady’s gun now. You’re not woman enough to carry it.”

Big, up on tiptoe, only shrieked and wriggled. I let him go and he fell backward to his ass. I returned to my stool, traced a finger round the rim of my glass, and caught Skinny’s eye in the backboard mirror. “You and your best girl walk out of here. On your knees.”

They did.

Maddie plucked the .38 from the bar and pocketed it without so much as a once-over. She planted her palms a yard apart in front of me. “That was interesting.”

I glanced up at her through a cocked eyebrow. “Was it?”

“I’d say so.” She tilted her head. “No charge for the shots, obviously.”

“Tell you what.” I checked my watch and slid my glass to her with a finger. “Those two, or anyone further up the food chain, ever come back here, you gimme a call.” I pressed my card to the bar with a thumb.

“Thanks.” She slipped it into her pocket.

“See you around.” I headed for the door.

“Yeah. See you around.”

*

Took me twenty minutes to go around the corner and do the job I came to town to do. I went back to Dick’s Tap to look in on Maddie, but the place was locked up and dark. I checked my watch. Eleven fourteen. Early last call for a struggling joint.

Light from a basement window in the alley. I crept to it and peeked inside.

A guy in filthy clothes dragged the two hookers from the bar into the room by their hair. They were naked, squirming, faces all twisted up. The guy was the pile of dude from in front of the can.

Maddie stood in the center of the room, pointing to a spot I couldn’t see. I stepped to the other side of the window to get that angle.

The wall was lined with cages. There were nude, smudged, young women in all but one.

The guy dragged the hookers into the cell Maddie pointed to, the empty one, and tossed them in. I couldn’t hear anything through the glass, but one collapsed and lay crying on her side. The other screamed, struggled with the bars. Her big, floppy tits pinwheeled.

The guy said something to Maddie, but his back was to me. I couldn’t hear her answer, but I read lips.

Yeah, they’re OK, she said. But we still need a slope with her cherry for those guys.

They walked out of view and the lights went out in the room.

Maddie never called.

BIO: Jason’s work can be found in Hardboiled, Pulp and Dagger, and a CyberPulp horror anthology.

Interlude Stories: Larry Strattner

2012-01-11T09:09:00.000-06:00

HELLO KITTY - LARRY STRATTNER

A crash downstairs woke him. The sound of someone stepping gingerly among broken crockery tinkled up the stairs. Someone moving carefully.

He grabbed his Remington 870 pump home-protection shotgun from the shelf above the bed. The gun-geezer at Cabela’s said the 870 was, “suitable for his ‘transitional’ neighborhood,” where only four people painted their houses, two of those mowed their lawns but everyone had a chain link fence and barred first floor windows.

Home invaders were down there, in his parlor, at the foot of the stairs, probably after his 52” Sharp Aquos Flat Screen and Surround Sound system. He had known they would come. An old man, a widower; living alone, defenseless. It was a given.

When he quietly reached the third step from bottom, he shouted, “Freeze!” A quick, threatening shape ghosted through the dark.

He fired the shell already chambered in the 870. The muzzle flash in the darkness was blinding. Another sound. He fired again. Each shell spit out 9 buckshot pellets. The 870 held seven rounds. He fired again, and as passion overcame him, again, again, again.

When the gun was empty, it was startlingly quiet. He flicked on the living room light. A cat sat on the plant stand against the left wall of the living room. Its eyes were yellow and seemed remarkably composed amidst the shock and awe. The cat must have gotten in through the bars on the porch window, cracked open for ventilation; knocked the damn vase off the parson's table in front of the window.

Sixty-three small holes festooned the walls, ceiling and various pieces of furniture. He couldn’t actually see all the holes but sixty-three would equal total pellets fired from the Remington. The room smelled of cordite. Thank god, he seemed to have missed the flat screen.

The neighbors wouldn’t call the cops. The neighbors never called the cops. But they would have heard. They would talk about the shotgun blasts and the home invaders would hear what neighbors had heard. Somebody would be thinking twice. Thinking about maybe breaking in somewhere where the dark had a lower lead content.

One round of buckshot had shredded his forty dollar Mark Twain autobiography. A few tiny pieces of its pages still floated in the air. He thought, Sam would’ve loved this. He could picture Clemens’ mustache wiggling, itching to tell the story.

The cat jumped gracefully down from the plant stand, walked over to him and rubbed against his leg. It made him think of his wife and smile. “Let’s go in the kitchen,” he said to the cat. “I’ll fix us a drink of warm milk.”

BIO: Larry Strattner formerly wrote out of a small room in northern Wisconsin. He has relocated to a small room in Eureka, California and will release a good, shoot-em-up book on Kindle in January. Since he’s not famous, it’ll be a thirty dollar story for only four bucks.

Interlude Stories: Cindy Rosmus

2012-01-06T07:18:00.000-06:00

MY FAVORITE PSYCHIC - CINDY ROSMUS

“Ex-cuse me!” the loud blonde asked the guy at the first table. “Did your mother love the color turquoise?”

“Well...” he said. “She had a sequined gown that color.”

The camera zoomed in on them. Shit, I thought. Good thing we were in the back. And Rudy facing the other way.

“Mother was buried in that gown, wasn’t she?” asked the loud blonde. When the guy nodded, she said, “Well, she’s sitting right next to you.”

Some people gasped. Others went on with their meals.

“Who’s that nut?” Rudy muttered.

“Nobody,” I said. But already I was drenched with sweat.

“That nut” faced the camera and announced, “Hi, folks. I’m Goldie Ferraro, and this is ... My Favorite Psychic!”

“Oh, jeez,” Rudy said, as everybody else applauded. “A fuckin’ reality show.”

My Favorite Psychic was hotter than Jersey Shore. Supposedly, Goldie hooked you up with dead loved ones. You never knew where she’d show up next.

Tonight it was Casa Vittore. If she came to our table, we were fucked.

She was getting closer. “Your husband?” she yelled at somebody else. “His name starts with a ‘J,’ right?”

Rudy still had no clue what was up: stoned, wearing shades at night. Better than his usual paranoid self. Idly, he picked up his fork, turned it over.

God, I love you, I thought. But sometimes he made me sick.

Five years, we’d been together. First, on the sneak, ‘cos he was married. To Lolly, a beast with bleached, spiky hair and three chins. He’d let Lolly walk all over him. She smacked him around, so he had a black eye, occasionally. He got used to wearing shades at night, back then.

Lolly bullied him, mercilessly. Shit, she even told him what to eat...

“I can’t eat mushrooms.” Rudy pushed away my Chicken Marsala. “Lolly says, ‘When nuclear bombs go off, they’re shaped just like mushrooms. They are giant, all-knowing, poisonous...”

But now he ate mushrooms like they were going out of style: in omelets, soups, and Casa Vittore’s succulent Chicken Marsala. It killed me, but theirs put mine to shame.

“Jenny, right?” Goldie asked the lady behind Rudy. “Your mom told me to tell you she forgives you.”

Rudy dropped his fork.

“For what?” The lady sounded annoyed.

Goldie was silent. Then she said, quietly, “We’ll make an appointment to discuss it, in private.”

“I knew it!” The lady sneered.

Around them, people snickered. But not Rudy and me.

“You wanna leave?” I whispered, but it was too late.

“Hi!” Up close, Goldie had ice-blue eyes and clown lips. “You know why I’m here, don’t you?”

“Sure. You’re filming a TV show.” I tried to be funny.

“Loll—” She sat next to Rudy, who backed away. “I’m getting lolly...Lolli-pop? You like lollipops?”

She was for real.

“What, hon?” Goldie looked over Rudy’s head. “What’cha say?”

“My name’s ‘Lolly,’ bitch!” his wife probably said. “And he don’t like lollipops. I won’t let him like them.”

Trembling, Rudy hid his face.

Suddenly, we were back in that room. Pink bed pillows we used, to smother Lolly. On her king-sized “princess” bed.

She fought back so savagely, it took both of us to restrain her. Both of us struggling to stay on top of her. On her chest, Rudy was like an alley cat, sucking life out of a huge baby. “Die!” he said, with this maniacal grin. “Die!” For the first time, I was scared of him.

Still, I helped him kill her.

We kept at it till her arms flopped. Till she stopped kicking those monstrous legs. Till she was finally, undeniably dead.

“Now,” he said, smiling. “I can eat what I want.”

At Casa Vittore, the camera caught Rudy sobbing on Goldie’s shoulder. Looking bored, the waitress stood by with our dinner.

“Oh, no!” Goldie said, as the plate came down. “He can’t eat mushrooms!”

Rudy took off his shades, threw them on the table.

“They will kill you.” Goldie played to the camera. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is breaking news. In the afterlife, it is common knowledge that nuclear bombs...and mushrooms...”

Rudy looked away from me.

“Oh, really, Lolly?” Goldie went pale, got up, slowly. “They did what?”she asked the air over Rudy’s head.

Horrified, she looked down at us.

And the camera zoomed in for good.

BIO: Cindy is a Jersey girl who works in New York City & who talks like Anybody’s from West Side Story. She works out 5-6 days a week, so needs no excuse to drink or do whatever the hell she wants. She loves peanut butter, blood-rare meat, Jack Daniels, and Starbucks coffee (though not usually in the same meal). She’s been published in the usual places, such as Hardboiled, A Twist of Noir, Beat to a Pulp, Out of the Gutter, Mysterical-E, Media Virus, and The New Flesh. She is the editor of the ezine, Yellow Mama. And she’s still a Gemini and a Christian.

Interlude Stories: Dot King

2012-01-05T09:30:00.000-06:00

NIGHT CALL 2 - DOT KING

She was nearly awake by the time she had got the receiver to her ear and clocked the caller ID on the screen. Rob.

*

Rob. Was he waking her to prattle some more? Since his wife’s death nearly a year ago, he had been trying to pull the strings of a new life together, making mistakes along the way, but getting there all the same. Even if he was extremely exasperating ...

Going from a full year of twenty-four-seven care to sudden freedom had gone to his head. He had become erratic, unfocused. Soon, perhaps too soon after the funeral, he had gone into a new relationship, moved in even with his new love. True romance it was not, so here he was back again in the house around the corner, keeping company with his late wife’s clothes, cosmetics, even her toothbrush had still been in the bathroom when he left. She had been trying, day by day, to help him clear things, but he got her down – not because he was sad or maudlin, but because if he was, he masked it behind endless puerile prattle. She found it wearing.

But still, she had to admit that he was trying to move forwards. He had adapted the top-floor bedroom and shower into a small, self-contained bedsit, given contact details to the local college and rented it out, six months ago, to his first student, who was on the point of leaving to be replaced by another, rather strange young woman whom she’d met two days ago.

Her luck had definitely been out as she passed by Rob’s house just as he was opening the window.

‘Hi, why don’t you come in and meet Ginny. She’s my new tenant, moving in tomorrow.’

And so, reluctantly, she had found herself sitting at Rob’s kitchen table with a mug of coffee, a plate of Speculos (which Rob insisted on calling ‘speculum biscuits’ - it had nearly been funny the first time) and feeling vaguely discomfited by the undercover visual inspection that Ginny was subjecting her to.

‘Ginny used to go to the school where you taught. I thought you might know each other. It was Rosemoor High, wasn’t it?’

‘No, in fact it was Roseleigh High.’

She hadn’t known she was going to lie and it shocked her, but something about this young woman made her feel that the less she said about herself, the better it would be. She looked at Rob to see if the lie had registered, but an unattentive man he had always been, ‘women's prattle’, such as their careers, skills, opinions, being of no consequence to him, whilst his own stream-of-consciousness prattle was, by his own definition, a mine of fascinating information.

She looked then at Ginny and attempted a smile. The girl looked back expressionless, her narrow eyes, slits in a palid, puffy face, still engaged in their scrutiny of her.

‘You went to Rosemoor then, Ginny? I have friends who worked there, when did you leave?’

‘Two years ago,’ Ginny replied, her voice as devoid of expression as her face and as atonal as her flat vowels.

So, there was something odd here, very odd. Rosemoor High had closed to merge with another school on another site a little over ten years ago. Why would anyone lie about the school they went to? She glanced at Rob, but judging from his absent, self-sufficient smile, he clearly wasn't even listening. She imagined trying to explain to him later what she was - not thinking exactly - but sensing about this girl. Stony ground. None of her business anyway. And hadn’t she lied about teaching at the school? Well, there we are. Goose and gander. Leave it alone.

‘What are you studying at the college?’

‘Hairdressing.’ Ginny reached down into her bag and brought out a neat cylinder of black cloth which she unrolled carefully on to the table. It contained scissors, combs, hairbrushes, grips. She displayed them proudly, the tools of her trade, touching them, one after another, slily, almost caressingly.

‘What’s this one?’

‘Oh, that. It’s a razor. We have to learn how to do old-fashioned shaves.’

And she extracted from its pocket in the cloth a cut-throat razor and half unfolded the blade. She touched the tip of her finger to its edge and showed her a spot of blood before licking it away. ‘Very sharp. Have to be careful,’ she murmured.

Rob roared with laughter and asked whether they got to practice on whiskery dummies or real live men. Ginny didn’t seem to think an answer was needed. She remained silent and closed.

A clumping noise from the stairs announced Angela, a cropped-haired, pretty, smiling girl of twenty, who backed into the room dragging two heavy cases in before upending them ready to be wheeled out of her studies and into her new life as an apprentice mechanic.

‘I’ll be off then, Rob. Thanks for everything.’ Looking at Ginny, she said: ‘You’ll be all right here. I’ve left everything as I’d like to find it, so you can just move in.’

She had taken the opportunity to escape and left at the same time as Angela, wanting to be away from the duty of chatting amiably with the singularly unlikeable Ginny, who fixed her with a porcine stare as she stood to leave. She stopped at the door, wondered again whether she should try to tell Rob of her misgivings, tried, but failed to catch his attention.

As she turned and stepped outside, it struck her that Rob’s usually unkempt goatee beard and stubble were unexpectedly.... well.... kempt.

*

She turned her head to look at the time as she spoke into the receiver.

Three twenty-four.

Rob.

At three twenty-four in the morning.

« Hello, Rob. »

Nothing. The line buzzed and echoed, a hollow noise.

« Rob? »

There came a rattling sigh. Then silence.

Interlude Stories: Richard Godwin

2012-01-04T09:17:00.003-06:00

BLOODBATH AT THE PERFUME FACTORY - RICHARD GODWIN

Rosemary of the soft skin had been acquired by Ronald Noble as his latest accessory.

She had wild blue eyes that had been switched off by the drugs and she liked to cover her skin in the oils sent from the exclusive perfume makers of France.

She had accounts with them all and knew the combination still used from the originators from Grasse.

Now, one Sunday, away from the sweaty advances of her husband, she dipped her body in the hot water of her bath and read about the US economy.

The book she held in her hand was called ‘Pissing It Up The Wall’ and she already loved the first paragraph.

She enjoyed the sensation of hot water lapping around her body as she digested the economic jargon and felt herself sliding into a tidal world of politics and manoeuvres.

Beneath the fiscal pomp she sensed a darker glory, a codification of need based on the control of dependence engendered by the economic relation between the pharmaceutical companies and the politicians.

And as she sipped her wine she sensed a way to crack her husband’s hollow skull.

She read about the waste incurred by the government, its statistical lies and obfuscations, its declaration of foreign support based on nothing more than reinvestment in its own economy and she began to feel hot.

Outside the window cleaner leaned on his ladder, a twisted allegory of pain.

He was the hanging man of her dreams, the one she could sup from.

And within that dark and bleeding moment she thought she was haemorrhaging on knowledge borne from the cup of sinful knowing.

That she had transgressed some hidden law and she felt the water had turned dark and she were bathing in blood.

The window cleaner leaned to watch the flesh on offer and his ladder slipped.

He reached out a hand and caught hold of an electrical cable plunging Rosemary into darkness.

He hung from the wire and managed to fall softly into a tree from which he made his escape with the cash he had earned.

Rosemary reached for her handbag, fumbling for her torch.

But there was no light in this economic blackness and she dropped a wad of cash into the bath.

The moon broke through some clouds and sent a distant ray of light into her steaming bathroom and as she stood and reached for the cash it seemed to her she was pulling the notes out of blood, each dollar dripping with blood and strangely erotic by the light of the moon.

And she realised as she stood there that the economy was nothing more than that and she knew all she needed to know.

Downstairs, she found the trip switch and lit the house.

Then she poured some wine and returned to her bedroom to dress.

She went into the bathroom and watched the steam swirl in the air and it seemed to her like the vaporous economy she inhabited.

She pulled the plug and watched the red water disappear down the pink drain and she knew the menstruating economy was another shell.

She made a salad Nicoise and waited for her husband to return home.

As she handed him his plate, she said, ‘I’m thinking of starting up a bank.’

BIO: Richard Godwin is the author of crime novel Apostle Rising, in which a serial killer is crucifying politicians and recreating the murder scenes of an original case. The novel has received great reviews.

It has just sold foreign rights to the largest publisher in Hungary.

He is widely published in many magazines and anthologies and also writes horror and Bizarro as well as literary fiction and poetry. You can find out more about him here. His Chin Wags At The Slaughterhouse are popular and penetrating interviews he conducts with other authors at his Blog.

His second crime novel, Mr. Glamour will be published in April of this year by Black Jackal Books as a paperback.

Interlude Stories: Jed Power

2011-12-27T13:24:00.000-06:00

THE PRESCRIPTION - JED POWER

“Is there anything else we can try, Doctor Fisher?” She was a shell of a woman and she asked the question without a trace of hope in her voice, almost as if she felt an obligation to ask it. She sat stiff and upright in a plush, red leather chair and looked across a large imposing mahogany desk at the man seated behind it. He had on a white coat and his hands were steepled at his chin. The walls surrounding him were covered with medical degrees. Even so, he seemed quite uncomfortable with the question he’d just been asked.

When he spoke it was slowly and in a businesslike tone. “For the progression of the disease...as I’ve said before...there is nothing except the treatments you are already undergoing. But for the nausea and appetite...possibly.” He cleared his throat and spoke more softly now. “Mrs. Sinclair, have you ever smoked marijuana?”

The question didn’t surprise her. Not much did anymore. Not since she found out she was sick. Still, she hesitated a bit before she spoke. “Why, yes I have. In college a few times.” Then adding quickly, “But that was a long time ago and not since then.”

“Of course,” the doctor said, nodding gravely. “Now, I was wondering. Are you familiar, by any chance, with the success some chemotherapy patients are having controlling their nausea with marijuana?” The doctor’s voice lowered considerably on the last word.

Mrs. Sinclair let out a heavy sigh. “Yes, I’ve heard about that. Matter of fact, I’ve wondered about it.”

The doctor stared at her intently and drummed his fingers on the desk. “Well, as I said, some patients have been helped considerably. Would you consider trying this option?”

Mrs. Sinclair didn’t hesitate a heartbeat. “I’d try anything, doctor.”

Doctor Fisher smiled and seemed to relax. He was silent for a moment, then in almost a whisper he said, “Will you have any trouble obtaining it?”

She touched her finger to her jutting cheekbone and was silent for a minute, thinking. “I ...I can’t think of anyone I would know to...”

The doctor held up his hand for her to stop. “That’s all right, Mrs. Sinclair. Arrangements can be made. Of course, you do understand the legal ramifications? That discretion is required. Also that both of us must pretend that this conversation never took place.”

“Certainly, doctor,” Mrs. Sinclair answered, nodding her head wearily. “I’m not that naive.”

“Good. Let me give you a card then.” He did not get one of his business cards from the small pile on the desk, but instead, reached into a drawer and pulled out a box of blank, white business size cards. He removed one and placed it on the desk. Taking a pen he scrawled an address on the card. He then handed it to her.

“Thank you,” she said, looking at the address. She was glad it was close by in an adjacent town.

“You’re welcome. The person at this address is safe and reliable. I’d trust him with my life. Are you able to go now?”

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

“Good. I’ll make the arrangements, so he’ll be expecting you.” He started to rise, then hesitated as he remembered something. “One more thing. I would suggest taking one of the preparations as soon as you get home from chemotherapy. A few puffs may suffice. If not, feel free to finish one. No more than one every four hours though. And of course, if you have any negative side effects discontinue use. Also, no driving until you’re sure the last dose has completely worn off.”

“Fine, doctor. And thank you again.” Mrs. Sinclair stood and extended her thin hand across the desk. The doctor stood and accepted it.

“Good luck,” he said. “And don’t forget to make your regular appointment on your way out.”

Mrs. Sinclair turned and hurried from the office.

It was only a short ride from the doctor’s office to the address on the card. Mrs. Sinclair was somewhat familiar with the town and had little trouble finding her destination. At the front door of the brick apartment building she pressed the appropriate button and was quickly buzzed in. She rode the elevator to the third floor, and when she found the right apartment she rapped timidly on the door. The door opened immediately to reveal a muscular man in a wheelchair. He had a warm smile and appeared to be about Dr. Fisher’s age.

“Hello,” he said. “Please come in.” He held the door for Mrs. Sinclair and then rolled ahead of her into a main living room which was tastefully furnished. She sat in a comfortable, over-stuffed barrel chair. The man swung his chair around to face her. He made no introduction.

“I believe you have something for me?” he asked. His tone was friendly and relaxed.

“Oh, yes. I’m sorry,” she answered. She rummaged through her small purse, pulled out the card and handed it to him.

The man looked at both sides quickly, turned and wheeled himself into an adjoining room. He was only gone a few minutes before he returned and handed her a small, clear sandwich bag. She could see that inside the bag were about a dozen thin, hand-rolled cigarettes which appeared to be pinched at their ends.

“Thank you,” Mrs. Sinclair said. Her hand shook as she placed the bag into her purse. “How much do I owe you,” she asked, her voice quivering.

The man mentioned a figure. And even though she had no experience in this type of transaction it seemed very reasonable to her. Her hands shook as she counted out the money and handed it to him.

He put the bills in his shirt pocket and asked, “May I offer you something? Coffee? A soft drink?”

“No,” she answered. “Nothing, thank you.” She looked nervously from side to side and said, “I think I should be leaving now.”

The man shrugged his shoulders as if disappointed but not surprised. “Yes, certainly,” he said. Mrs. Sinclair stood and he followed her to the door of the apartment. “It’s been a pleasure meeting you. And of course, please feel free to get in touch with me again at any time. Here’s my number.” He handed her a small piece of paper.

“Yes, I may do that,” she said. Before stepping through the doorway she looked down at the man, and emphasizing each word she said, “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

The man smiled warmly. “You’re welcome.” Then added softly, “Good luck.”

Mrs. Sinclair turned, clutched the purse close to her waist, and hurried out of the apartment towards the elevator.

It was a week later that Mrs. Sinclair found herself at her local bookstore. She enjoyed seeing what was new; picking up the books and leafing through the pages. Sometimes she felt she could spend a whole day doing nothing else, until she had fallen ill and the trips to the bookstore were even too much for her. But now, she felt up to it again! And she knew she owed it all to Dr. Fisher and the man in the wheelchair he had sent her to. It hadn’t been a miracle but it had been the next best thing. And now the small, important things in life, like browsing in bookstores, were enjoyable again. And wasn’t that just wonderful!

Now as she scanned the rows of books one caught her eye. She reached up and took it down. The title read: “Big Deals.” Below that the blurb: “The True Story of Medical Students and a Marijuana Smuggling Ring.” Up until a week ago, not the type of book that would have interested her. But now, she thumbed through it slowly. She stopped when she came to a series of photos in the middle of the book.

There was a picture of a boat loaded with marijuana bales. Armed Coast Guard and Customs men stood around the contraband. She turned the page and saw a group of six or seven young men’s photographs--mugshots--all with numbers across their chests. One of the pictures instantly jumped out at her; he hadn’t changed that much. She had no doubt; it was him. The man in the apartment, with the wheelchair and the medicine. He looked much younger and healthier but it was definitely him.

She read his name and the rest of the little caption under his photo. It identified him as a medical student who was involved in the smuggling operation. He had been sentenced to a twenty-year mandatory prison sentence and released after serving eighteen years, but not before he had been crippled in a prison altercation.

She took the book and hurried to a chair in a secluded section of the store. She flipped through the pages, her eyes skimming them as she went. Occasionally, she’d slow her reading when words grabbed her. She got the gist of the tale faster than a speed reader. What she learned excited her.

Apparently the wheelchair bound man had been the only one on board the marijuana laden ship when it was seized at a Hampton Beach, New Hampshire dock. The case against him was airtight. His only hope against a long prison stay and the loss of a future medical career was testifying against others involved.

Federal authorities had already been able to link six other medical students to the smuggling operation but the case against them was weak...unless the man found on board would cooperate. He steadfastly refused, was found guilty in a federal court and sentenced to the maximum twenty year sentence. Eventually, because of his refusal to turn on his friends, the charges against the six were dropped.

Mrs. Sinclair jerked her head up. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? She quickly turned back to the book’s picture section. And there he was--the one on the bottom right. And it was him! He had a beard then, and not only hair but very long hair. No glasses then too. She didn’t even have to look at the name below the picture. But she did---James Fisher. It was Dr. Fisher and above him the man in the wheelchair.

And she remembered now what Dr. Fisher had said. “I’d trust him with my life.” And she realized how good that must feel; to trust someone with your life. Because now she felt it, too.

Mrs. Sinclair smiled, tucked the book, “Big Deals” under her arm and feeling very good walked briskly up the aisle to the cashier.

Interlude Stories: Liam Sweeny

2011-12-27T13:23:00.000-06:00

HITCH-HIKER - LIAM SWEENY

Smitty and D-John walked out the bodega, a little shit-hole, windows barred and filled with cigarette and lottery signs, neon beer glows. They had two forties in crumpled paper bags, not even waiting to leave the store before pounding them. They walked over to the corner, past the view of the store, a new block in a new neighborhood for the same business. Smitty had the bundle, and D-John was there to enforce. Too many crazy junkies stompin' the grounds. But they were always for roughing up a junkie, or robbing a nice watch, or any opportunity that came up. Like a stranger in a shiny, classic black Mercedes SUV. The guy that hopped out was a little wiry fuck with coke-bottle glasses. He parked in back of the lot; no cameras, no one watching out. Perfect.

“Yo, let’s boost that,” D-John said. “The engine’s runnin’!”

“Crazy... Dude’ll report that stolen quick-fast; we won’t get far...”

“Joey’s chop is two blocks down,” D-John pleaded. “We don’t have to get that far.”

They walked up to the SUV. It was purring. They didn’t think; thinking wasn’t what kept them on the block, or in a cell-block, their whole lives. They hopped into the heavy smell of air freshener, masking a much nastier smell. D-John put it in gear and eased it back out. Joey could slice out the smell. They’d still get a couple large for the car. They sped off, Smitty catching the guy in his rear-view. Fucked up thing was, the guy just waved good-bye.

They got to the chop-shop and D-John rapped on the garage door; two, by three, by one, by four. The door slid up, and Joey walked out, bear-hugging D-John. They went to P.S. 13 together; they were tight. He motioned Smitty to drive it in.

“It stinks, Joey,” D-John said. “But everything’s good.”

“I can smell it from here, dog...” Joey grabbed a flashlight and poked his head in the front-door, unlatching the back door and unlocking the trunk. The smell became unbearable. Joey lifted a blanket off the back seat; no sooner than he did it that he turned around and puked. Then the voice came on through the stereo.

“Enter deactivation code, Mr. Barrow.”

Ding!

Joey screamed at D-John. "There’s fucking body parts in this car! Did you even bother to check the back seat!?”

“I-I Just thought...”

“You don’t think, D-John!” Joey screamed. “You never think about shit!” Joey rubbed his temples. “Where the fuck you get this?”

“Over at the bodega, Joey... I’ll just drive it back.”

“Oh yeah.” Joey was furious. “Leave your prints, my prints, and my crew’s prints all over it by the time the dude you stole it from has five-o there about gettin’ his car stolen!”

“He got bodies in this piece! You think he’s callin’ cops, Joey!?”

One of his other mechanics looked in the trunk. He puked, too. “Trunk’s full of ’em!” He said between hurls.

Ding!

“And it’s got an alarm! Fuck is wrong with you?” Joey said. He went to the workbench and grabbed a pair of pliers before reaching hesitantly into the center console to clip the wires on the alarm. Then his eyes bulged when he saw what the alarm was wired to.

“Holy sh-”

Ding!

*

They both felt the earth shake as the explosion rocked the neighborhood.

“What in the hell was that?” asked the bodega owner.

“Sounded like a propane tank blew up.”

“You want me to call your cops about the car?”

“Oh no, that wasn’t my car,” the wiry man replied, pushing his coke-bottles up the bridge of his nose. “It was just a couple of strangers that dropped me off here. They picked me up on Route 43; I had to hitch-hike.”

“Gotta be careful ’bout hitch-hiking ’round here...” the bodega owner said. “You never know who’s gonna pick you up.”

The wiry man turned to him as he dialed 411 on his cell for a cab. “I guess I was lucky. Thank you, sir.”

The bodega owner went back inside. The wiry man dialed 3 on his phone.

“Hey,” he said. “It’s Barrow. It’s all taken care of.”

“What do I owe you?” said the voice on the phone.

Mr. Barrow could hear the whoops of the fire engines and the screams of cop cars.

“A new Mercedes,” he said. “I’m heading you’re way.”

“How are you getting here, John? Plane? Bus?”

“I’ll get there, don’t worry...” Barrow said, feeling the weight of his heat in the shoulder holster. He laughed. “…might just hitch-hike.”

BIO: Liam Sweeny is a novelist and short fiction writer from upstate New York. He has published two novels, and a short works compilation. In his free-time he volunteers in disaster relief work and is a struggling...everything.

Introduction To Callan’s Purgatory Sex Twins

2011-12-14T13:22:00.000-06:00

This is an introduction of sorts.

It’s actually an affirmation of what I think about the audience that comes to this site and the writers that write for it. I believe that this audience is adult enough to read the following story and not go apeshit over it and want for it to be removed or for the author to be told that they are engaging in a fantasy.

The following story is, in my opinion, both gruesome and beautiful and is ultimately a brilliant piece of writing.

It’s gruesome because of the subject matter, the incest and all the gory details. But this happens in our world and it should not be flinched away from simply because it puts our nerves on edge or makes us want to turn away and sweep it under the carpet.

That is, in my opinion, the biggest no-no in writing. You write about things that hurt, that make people want to turn away. You expose the light to these dark things. You don’t write about the simple stuff, or at least not all of the time.

A little while ago, Graham Smith had a story published at Thrillers, Killers ’N Chillers and, the exact same day, he had it removed because the editors were under pressure by a small, miniscule, really, number of people that didn’t like the story because of the subject matter.

I offered Graham to have his story published at A Twist Of Noir and he declined.

The biggest injustice in writing is to silence something.

So Purgatory Sex Twins is difficult to read and its subject matter is gruesome.

So what?

It is also beautiful. The beautiful part is the start of the story and what ultimately turns out to also be the ending of the story.

There is something that moves the reader in that ending.

And, because of that ending, the entire piece, I believe, becomes a brilliant piece of writing. It moves you from “What is this?” at the beginning to revulsion at the actions of not only the narrator but also the revulsion of the situation that both he and his sister find themselves in (and not just the incest but also the feelings that they share) and, by the end of the story, we now understand why it is that he cannot ascend the staircase with his sister, that being a metaphor for heaven.

Brilliant and I’m proud to have this story at A Twist Of Noir.

Interlude Stories: Callan

2011-12-14T13:21:00.000-06:00

PURGATORY SEX TWINS - CALLAN

My sister and I hold hands as we walk up the long flight of cold, white, marble stairs. The stairs gleam in the perpetual blackness. I can not see the bottom of the steps when I am at the top and I can not see the top of them when I am at the bottom. When we reach the last step I let go of her hand, and the great empty dark space grows still dimmer.

“I can’t go with you any further.” My voice booms out in the cavernous darkness much louder than I intend.

My sister fixes her large dark eyes on me for a moment then she turns and lifts one foot but midstep she pauses and turns back towards me. “I am not sure if I want to go upstairs. I am not sure that there is an upstairs.” Her voice was thin and tear-filled.

We walk back down the long flight of stairs. When we get to the bottom of the stairs, she begins to pontificate about what might be upstairs.

Again, I would take her small cold hand in mine and lead her to the top. And, again, when we reached the final step, I would have to tell her that I could go no further. She was afraid to go alone.

I beat her to death with a shovel.

I killed her in the kitchen. As she lay dying, I kissed her. I ripped her thin, blood-soaked blouse.

Buttons exploded into the heavy air saturated with the scent of her blood. She raised her hand to my face and smiled. I wound myself around her and sucked on her bloody tits. I kissed her neck, the salty taste of blood sent an erotic charge through me. I pulled the rest of her clothing off and held her. I had never loved her more than when she was my murder victim. She spread her legs for me and I thrust myself inside her. I could feel her ebbing away.

I loved my sister so much.

After she was dead, I held her and wept. Her body was still warm and blood poured out from her.

I went into the bathroom and took a shower. I watched the pink-colored water flow down the drain.

My sister’s blood was running down the drain. My body convulsed thinking of her cold. I loved her. I loved her as much as I hated myself. And for that, there could be no measure. The absence of her heartbeat was unbearably hollow.

She could not live without me. I could not live with her without succumbing to my most disgusting sexual desires.

We tried to live apart. We tried to be normal. In the three years we lived in different parts of the country, she overdosed twice on sleeping pills and slashed her wrists. Each time, at the final moment when death had come for her, she had called an ambulance. She could not make up her mind.

What no one understood was that we could feel each other’s heartbeats, feel each other’s pain. If she banged her wrist on the side of the table, pain shot through my wrist. When she was angry at me and feeling neglected, she would stab herself, pull her hair. If she suspected I was with a woman, she would squeeze the lips of her pussy, making it difficult for me to maintain my erection. If I managed to come, she would feel it. She would feel what I would feel and I would feel the special brand of rejection and self-hatred that women have made their own. Other times, she would masturbate when she knew I was at work. I would feel the build, feel the straining of my muscles. She would take a long time to climax. It was agony. I would call her and tell her to finish herself off.

“Please, please just finish!” I would beg her.

“Talk to me, tell me about the first time when you fucked me, describe what it felt like. Tell me.” The desperation in her voice repelled me, but I would do it. I would tell her how it was, then she would come and the line would go dead. We were so connected that, when I fucked her for the first time, I could feel her pain. I could feel the pain of a young girl losing her virginity and the gratification of a rapist. What delightfully sadistic agony to feel both sensations at once!

Our folks died and we inherited the house and money. I moved in with her. We did not have to work, plenty of dough. We were alone together in the house, day in and out. I could see no point in trying to lead a normal life. After three years away from her, I knew that it was no use. A few times when we had been apart, she had taken men to bed with her. She went out of her way to debase herself. I could feel her pain. I could feel the emptiness such encounters left inside her. I had raped her when we were children and no other sexual experience could match that memory, so I gave in. I gave in and began living with her. We slept in the same bed, we avoided people. We pretended that we were in love.

I grew bored. I could not enjoy sex without hurting her. I could feel her pain, and it hurt like hell but she could feel my excitement and, when I came, she came in response. The only problem was that each time I had to go further to get aroused.

First, I held her down. Soon that was not enough. I had to tie her down. That held me for a long while, over a year. There is something really exciting about watching thin, bruised wrists strain against ropes. There is something intoxicating about genuine cries of pain, of humiliation. I would cover her mouth with one hand and lean against her throat with my arm. I would watch her eyes bulge. See her face drain of blood. Then she would be still and fix those dark eyes on me. She was feeling what I was feeling: disgust and sexual gratification. This was enough for awhile. Her favorite part was afterward, when I would bathe her. Satisfaction would invade her as I gingerly lay her in the water. I could feel her. I could feel love, the love she felt for me and I loved her then. I would scrub every inch of her. Often, while I was scrubbing between her legs with hot water, she would come, which in turn would make me come. These were the salad days.

Two years passed before I truly began to hate her. She could feel my hate. I felt the hopeless feeling, the despair she felt. I knew I had to kill her; every waking moment was agony for her. Hate is the wrong word for what I felt for her. There isn’t a word deep enough to describe what I felt for her. Everything she felt, I felt. Everything I felt, she felt. It was too much sensation. She felt my hatred and repulsion for her. She felt the hatred and repulsion I felt for myself. Her capacity for love and hate went much deeper than mine.

What created us? I had done research on other twins. I could not find evidence of anything even approaching the physical and emotional connection we shared; we were truly one person in two separate bodies.

The incest continued becoming more and more depraved. One afternoon, I convinced her to let the dog fuck her. I could feel her self-hatred I could feel the erotic charge of ultimate humiliation. The sensation was so powerful that, for a fraction of a second, we were both able to feel what the dog was feeling. We could hear with a dog’s ears smell her cunt with a dog’s nose. The canine’s primitive thrusting was a new high, but it was also the final low. I had to pour water on them to separate them. She was bleeding. I kicked the dog. Then I fell on top of her. I could feel how raw she was. I could feel everything. The sensory experience was so intense. I felt every hair on her body growing, every muscle twitching, the lungs taking in air to scream. The empty space in her chest when the screaming ended.

I dragged her by the hair into the kitchen. She lay on the floor. It was as if she was possessed. She was trying to speak but the words were guttural, demonic, primitive. She tried to stand pulling herself up on the counter, smearing blood everywhere. I could not look at her. I was the cause of this. I created this so it was my job to put it out of its misery.

I went outside to get a shovel. Somewhere between the house and the garden shed the idea of sodomizing her with the handle of the shovel sent a charge through me and I could feel her again. I could feel her cringe. I could feel that intoxicating current of self-hatred and sexual arousal. In my mind, I spoke to her. I comforted her. I was able to soothe her.

After I had killed her, I felt free. I was no longer weighed down by an extra set of emotions.

When the night came, I still had not cleaned up the mess in the kitchen. Rather than cook dinner, I ordered a pizza. Then I went down to my local watering hole and I drank and drank. I did not feel the double feeling of getting two people drunk and behind my eyes was the image of my twin sister. For the first time, it dawned on me that I would never have her again.

When I got back home, I fell onto the couch and slept but my dreams were only my own. I woke with the dawn and went to the garden shed. I grabbed a bottle of ant poison and swallowed as much as I could. For a fraction of a second, I could feel her. I went back to the house sat on the couch and drank the rest of the poison. An intense pain seized my gut. I could feel her feeling my pain.

I was on my way back to her.

Next: I was standing with her at the bottom of a staircase; we were together, again, in death. We mounted the marble staircase. It was a long flight of stairs and we held hands. When we got to the top, she paused. “I don’t know if I want to go upstairs after all,” she whispered.

We never discussed it but we both understood that I would not be able to ascend the staircase with her; if she went upstairs, she would leave me behind for good. We would be apart forever more. I killed her and myself. I would never be allowed upstairs. “Let’s go down one more time, ok?”

“OK,” I said. There was nothing but time now.

Perhaps eons of time have passed, perhaps mere hours, how can I know?

Even in death, we are not free of one another. Until she goes upstairs, we will never be free. But neither of us is willing to part. So up and down the stairs we go. Up and down the stairs for all eternity.

Interlude Stories: K.A. Laity

2011-12-14T10:36:00.001-06:00

MANDRAKE ANTHRAX - K.A. LAITY

“I know where to get you some.”

Hanley looked up. Nagle sat there, nodding a little too fast, knee jittering like a piston. Madman: he was on something hoppy again, overdoing it. Expanding his head, he always claimed; next he would be seeing giant moths. Again. “Get what?”

“Mandrake anthrax.” He breathed the words like an incantation.

A shiver wormed down Hanley’s spine. “It’s not real. Just a song, like.” Yet he could feel his tongue working in his mouth already, ready to taste it.

Nagle smiled. “Riley told me.”

“That fucker’s a liar.”

“Not that he had it, that it was real. He was looking.” Nagle leaned toward Hanley, bringing his scabby chops a little too close for comfort. “But I found it.”

“I thought you were going to help me move,” Hanley said, grabbing the empty Tennent’s box and sweeping some CDs into it. “The housing association won’t let me stay past this week.”

“Too right.”

Hanley looked at him. “You all right there?”

“Sure, sure, sure. And yourself?” For a moment Nagle appeared to connect with this realm. His too blue eyes clouded over again and the hum returned.

“No, I’m fucking not. These arse-lickers have it in for me. I should emigrate.” He threw a few more CDs in the box then sighed. Moving made him feel fifty years old. I should be on the trail of some fine pilsner, Hanley thought, fuck this for a laugh.

“It’s not far,” Nagle urged, knee jerking even faster. “Just down the street, number 63. Decadence and anarchy, eh?” Nagle nodded more, seemingly unable to stop once he started.

“You will drive me insane with that,” Hanley said, irritation finally getting the better of him. “Could you stop feckin’ nodding for two minutes together?”

Nagle looked wounded. “Sorry, mate.”

“Mate.” Hanley kicked the Tennent’s box. He wished it were a dog. Or Nagle.

“Friend o’ my youth, brother in arms, ancestral sage,” Nagle crooned.

Hanley laughed. “Feckin’ eejit!” Anything had to be better than packing: a reasonable offer. “Right. How much you got?”

Nagle’s eyes flashed and he jumped to his feet. The man practically danced. “Plenty, plenty. Had a little visit home this week. Yourself?”

“I put a wee bit by.” It was no less than the truth. The crisp blues had been destined for Connolly’s or Garavan’s and a swiftly flowing river of lager. Perhaps a man ought to expand his horizons on occasion—not as far as Nagle, mind. “Right-o.”

“Go round there then, shall we?”

In the streets below the rain pelted down and the wind howled mournful. Hanley pulled his collar up. Nagle shuffled along beside him, the hum audible even in that din. How much longer would the Crimbo lights be up? Surely the city paid good money to unstring them even at the holiday rate.

“Here.” Nagle nodded but once. Lesson learned.

Hanley eyed the brick façade. The door proved to be a gothic affair, metal bound and painted all black. Seeing no modern convenience, he lifted the oversized bat knocker and clapped it to a few times. They both craned their ears but all around them it was suddenly as quiet as death as if all the people had walked hand in hand into the bay abandoning the city behind them. Hanley shuddered.

When he had just about surrendered all hope and began to get thirsty for a tall foamy pint, the door groaned open to reveal a disheveled looking eurotrash reject of indeterminate age. “What?”

Hanley found him off-putting. Nothing like a youngster thinking he was better than he was to rile him. Nagle must have sensed it. He swayed in and said, “We’re here to see your man.”

The dull-witted young man stared for a moment, as if he were about to refuse, then shouted over his shoulder, “Gregor, coupla pugs for ye.” He moved himself with the door to allow the two to pass.

“Thanks, pikey,” Hanley muttered. His mam woudn’t have held with such rudeness, but Hanley figured the kid ought to have been more humble to them. Unprofessional it was.

They walked along the corridor to the sitting room at the back. The afternoon light—such as it was—filtered in through the net curtains and lit a strange scene. Cholly Case sat on the mock-leather sofa, the parts of some fancy gun spread out before him as he polished a shiny piece. He nodded to Hanley, then went back to his work. At the table a Dutch woman sat there weeping and playing Solitaire.

Gregor raised his hands in greeting. “My friends, welcome!”

Nagle oozed obsequiousness. “Gregor, you’re looking lively.”

“It’s no less than the truth,” the dealer agreed. “What’ll you be having today? A little crack with your craic.”

Hanley grimaced. The joke was so old it had a beard in his grandfather’s youth. “None of your cut-rate Polish grinder.”

Their host smiled, a magnificent and beneficent beam. “May the cat eat you.”

Nagle intervened. “We were after some mandrake anthrax.” He managed to invoke the words without betraying the hunger behind them.

Gregor’s surprise could not be hidden, but he recovered quickly. “How quickly it spreads, the word.” He named a price. It was sufficiently astronomical to be convincing.

Nagle nodded at Hanley. This time he could not cease the jerky motion. “We’ll do it.”

Gregor looked from one to the other of them. The Dutch woman sniffled. Without another word, he turned and went to the cupboard below the sink. When he returned, Gregor held out a bottle. Its black letters spelled Hex.

“Mandrake Anthrax,” he cooed.

Somehow the bottle seduced. Hanley’s fingers itched to hold it. The dark green curves would fit his hand like an old friend. He couldn’t smell it, yet it tickled his senses. It had been the right thing. His tongue moved, lascivious.

Hanley handed over his folding money and swigged.

The effects came instantly. His belly boiled with its heat. His skull expanded. His mouth began to laugh. Nagle looked so small beside him. That seemed to be funny as well and he threw his head back to guffaw with abandon.

The room widened. The moon peeked in. How had the time passed? Nagle chattered, his arms stalks waving in the gloaming. For some reason it angered Hanley.

Gregor poked a finger at him, but Hanley did not let it dissuade him. His legs propelled him across the darkened room as if they were moving through meringue. Nagle shrank in the twilight. No more than a bug, Hanley thought. With both hands he grabbed the wee man’s ears. He pulled Nagle’s head off and watched it skitter up the wall. The eyes blinked at him from their perch. His humour returned. No point moving, he realised. I’m already in hell. Hanley laughed his own head off.

Interlude Stories: Salvadore Ritchie

2011-12-13T15:38:00.000-06:00

THE RITUAL - SALVADORE RITCHIE

Jason rattled through the top drawer of the nightstand, carelessly tossing things aside, then stopping abruptly. I was standing behind him, so I couldn’t see the item he had uncovered. By his exaggerated pause, whatever it was had captivated his attention. He reached in the drawer, gently removed the object, and then turned around.

Clutched in his hand was a polished, .32 snub-nose revolver. I could see its weight by the light strain it had on Jason’s skinny arm.

“This job’s already too complicated. I won’t kill people.” Jason said this as if he was talking to the .38. His voice rose to a nervous pitch, his eyes shifted towards me. “I’m not a killer.” Given that he practically had the gun pointed at my chest, I found this a bit ironic.

“You get me, man?” Jason lowered the weapon, appearing to take some control over his nerves. His resolve came more into focus.

“I get you,” I said, pausing to emphasize the brevity of our exchange, “...man.”

The house we were robbing belonged to rich, empty-nesters. Jason told me that these kinds of people were valuable for their accumulation of wealth, often times translating to vast collections of jewelry, cutting edge consumer products, and quite frequently, armaments.

Jason stormed over to our duffle bag and shoved the pistol recklessly inside. He didn’t check to see if it was loaded. “I’m not a killer,” he repeated, this time to himself. As he approached the sizable walk-in closet, he repeated the phrase aloud, and a few seconds later, he muttered it again. It was like he was trying to talk himself out of something that was never asked of him. Maybe he saw something in me that prompted him to make such a declaration, but either way, I was crystal clear on the limits of his moral flexibility.

“Jason... I’m going back downstairs to see if we missed anything.” I tried to sound as if nothing were wrong.

“Maybe we should reconsider that television? It’s big, but fencing it should be easy enough.”

He stopped what he was doing, which was pulling shoe boxes off the top shelves of the walk-in. Rummaging through shoe boxes, he claimed, was a technique that sometimes netted family heirlooms like antique jewelry or rolls of cash.

“The T.V.” He didn’t turn around. “Just the T.V., alright?” His voice wilted, as if he were pleading with me. I found this to be the most unappealing moment of our short partnership. Jason was a seasoned burglar; myself a novice. I had wrongly assumed that, during his long stint in this vocation, he must have encountered almost every situation thinkable. By the broad nature of his boasts, I was sure he was a master, but now I realized that I was merely a naïve victim of his overly exaggerated showmanship.

He continued rummaging through the closet as I made my way out of the room.

I couldn’t help but notice the entire house held a deep, vast silence that felt entirely inescapable. Each room, each corridor I had previously visited contributed to this feeling. Only the staircase betrayed the wide expanse of nothingness that permeated in this place.

Slight creaks from the wooden stairs formed a crisp echo as I stepped off the last plank onto the polished tile floor of the foyer. Tall ceilings and ebony colored furniture carefully dotted the living room.

Scattered about the walls was a collection of abstract art that was both engaging and aesthetically appealing. I had nearly lost myself in a painting that reminded me of the beautiful wreckage found in many dead cities. That’s when the gagging and shuffling behind me snapped me back to reality.

I let my pleasant daydream float away, applying my concentration on what Jason and I had presumed to be the owners of the house. There they were, next to each other in the middle of the living room, bound to dining chairs by duct tape and gagged with washcloths held in place by more duct tape.

We had stumbled across them during our stealthy entrance. They had been gone for days; perhaps they were back from a trip? A vacation?

The husband, an older gentleman, had a sunburned face. Needless to say, he was stunned when he found me standing before him, crowbar in hand. My swing was accurate and resulted in a bleeding forehead. He went down fast and easy. The woman, also sunburned, had bleached hair, exaggerated by the roots.

After getting them tied up and gagged, Jason pleaded that we leave. I calmly presented the case that they were bound and that we had regained control of the situation. I also reminded him that this entire venture would be a lot of risk and effort, all for nothing. Eventually, I persuaded him to stay and finish the task at hand, and assured him I would assume responsibility for the unfortunate homeowners.

Upon my approach, the homeowners both reanimated with tugs and pulls. They struggled against the coils of duct tape, as if doing so might postpone my inevitable advance.

I kneeled in front of them.

The sweat made their sunburned foreheads shine. Wide-eyed, they both watched me in silence. The drops of crimson on the man’s collar had darkened to the familiar brown of a blood stain. The woman had a blouse on with a catchy tropical pattern. She wore a playful white skirt.

I decided right then to begin my ritual. I wanted them both to understand everything that was going to happen to them. It’s important to me for my victims to imagine what’s about to take place, so I raised my hand to the woman’s exposed knee, ever-so-slowly. As I touched her, I could feel her skin gently shudder as the rate of her breathing increased dramatically. The contour of her breasts exaggerated with each deep inhalation, this was made pronouncedly more difficult due to the rag crudely stuffed in her mouth. The man’s eyes widened further now. He screamed into his gag and shook violently, but to no avail. My hand crept up slowly, only an inch or two, which was right when I caught what I needed... His eyes. His eyes were filled with such a complicated kaleidoscope of fear and horror that I felt between my legs the snake of my better spirit, rising. It’s always in the eyes where one can tell if a spouse truly loves the other. It’s the eyes that let you read an entire transcript of a life spent together. It’s all in the eyes. It’s always better when they’re really in love. I needed him to watch. I needed him to absorb everything with perfect, unambiguous clarity. I was going to take him far beyond the confines of normal human depravity.

I squeezed her knee firmly, but not so much as to be abusive. Not yet. The man shook even more violently. It was time for them to embrace the blackness.

But then... A creak from a small distance. My concentration broke. Was it the staircase? Was it Jason? I abandoned all pursuits with the couple, snapping myself up. I had enough presence of mind not to move. I waited for the next creak to confirm Jason’s descent. The silence was only broken by the couple’s heavy breathing.

“Jason?”

I called out and waited another minute.

Nothing.

I made my way out of the living room and over to the staircase, mindful of everything around me.

The staircase was empty. I knew better than to call up. Jason was likely still collecting items and I wouldn’t want to break his concentration. I needed his focus, needed to use it against him.

I went to the kitchen. The tools of my trade were on my mind, when I happened across a stainless steel cutlery set. While going over the general merits of a carving knife, a boning knife, and a host of various table knives, I thought about the relationship Jason and I shared. The passing bit of regret about our souring partnership was offset by my sense of work ethic. I had originally been attracted to Jason for his reputation as a thief, as a cold criminal. With my specialties being closer to recreation, I had hoped that we could merge our specific disciplines. I pictured us making a real mark everywhere we went. I could have shown him my ways, and he could have shown me his. Naturally I couldn’t let him immediately know where my specialties lay, but this surprise opportunity was the most prominent litmus test of his constitutional durability to date. Sadly though, he had made his intention quite clear. Now, I had to make the tough decision. This was never easy, no matter how many times you cut a partner up. But in order to complete my ritual, Jason had to go.

The biggest handle sticking out of the cutlery set was all that remained. The rest of the knives left me empty. They had no soul, no... Swagger. I reached for the handle and, to my pleasant surprise, I pulled out a bulbous meat cleaver. It was stunning. The girth of the handle was strong and phallic-like. It was a glorious piece of equipment.

I had leaned into what was going to be my first step, when I looked up to see Jason in the doorway.

“I saw you out there.” His voice no longer contained that pleading quality... It had filled out now, contained a much deeper, baritone quality.

Was it anger?

No.

Not anger.

“I saw you with those people.”

To my surprise, I believe his voice was filled with...

Disgust.

This came to me as a total shock, because the prerequisite to feeling disgust is a sense of superiority towards the object of your disgust... And we had long ago defined our intellectual hierarchy. He was breaching all protocol.

Not to mention, he was holding that shiny .38.

“I know what you are.” He raised the .38 to my chest. “Put down the cutter.”

I complied without protest. I set the cleaver down on the counter beside me. Since the gun was a revolver, I could finally see that all the chambers were loaded.

“I know what you are.” I could tell that his disgust was growing. He certainly liked repeating himself.

“What am I?” I asked.

“You’re a monster.” Each word was plump with poison.

As if a light too bright for my eyes had suddenly been turned on, I winced. I couldn’t understand why I felt such rage, such dirtiness. Relying purely on instinct, I grabbed the cleaver and jumped.

The distance between us was too great. He fired, the bullet piercing my torso. It felt like hot lava rippling through my organs, or like the stinger of a giant wasp, tearing through my abdomen.

I gurgled some words.

I found myself on the floor, Jason standing over me.

Warm liquid began filling my throat.

I coughed up blood.

I cocked my head to the side to let some of the blood drain from my mouth. “I thought you wouldn’t kill?”

“I said, ‘I wouldn’t kill people.’ You’re a monster.” He pulled the hammer back until it clicked.

I coughed up more blood and smiled.

“What’s the difference?”

BIO: Check out http://salvadoreritchie.com/ for more information on Sal and his writing.

Interlude Stories: Jamie Grefe

2011-12-13T09:29:00.000-06:00

MOUTH FULL OF VENOM - JAMIE GREFE

It was becoming hard to focus. The bedroom, a strobe of monochrome and neon. Soupy blood gushed from the fresh gash in my fat gut. I used my left hand to shovel stomach bits back in while Technicolor crimson swirled across my upturned right palm, dripped in stringy strands to the floor. Things were slipping from my grip just like the unhappy marriage and the torrid affair. Phlegm formed in my throat, sat in my mouth. I fondled the lampshade for support.

Salino stood by the bedroom door, eyes locked in a dead stare, mouth wide: a grin of marital vengeance. Bastard had stabbed me. The hunting knife in his hand was wet, gold front tooth sparkled in the street lamp glow from outside the open window like a cheap jewel. Salino: smirking murderer, handsome devil-dog, and better half of Lexa, the fairy that squawked, mistress sublime. I spat that gob of phlegm on the floor, tried to count the watery monochrome chunks.

He tugged at starched sleeves, straightened his jacket in quick twitches, ran a slender hand down the length of his necktie. He strode big steps to stand closer, steps that carried with them an invisible velocity, nudging me back to the bed where I slumped drooling. My head swayed in a slow bounce. Oozing waves of blood made everything prickly with perceptual fuzz. The bed felt springy and warm, my head woozy and flat. Salino approached spinning the knife around, twirled it in his tattooed fist like a bad kung-fu pantomime. The word, “Love” engraved on his fingers wavered up and down, each letter undulating in an ebb of the violence incomplete. Almost.

Open your mouth, he said to me.
You gonna kiss me? I said.
Hardly.

His other hand, the one with “Lexa” inked into it, gripped my chin, tilted my head up to meet his gaze. Cheeks squished, my mouth puckered open in a crusty oval. Bruised eyes looked up, all the way up to the tip-top of his bald head where a skull-sized cobra, tongue flickering fire, had been tattooed in blue ink. The hunting knife eased gently across my cheek. I held gut blood in, kept my insides from spilling out. The cobra’s eyes stared.

I’m gonna cut you up, Salino said, touching the rim of my lips with the tip of the knife. But first, and he paused to reflect before whispering, I’m gonna cut out your teeth, one by fucking one. Just carve ’em out of your gums like a pumpkin. He paused again. I’m gonna wear those teeth around my motherfucking neck just so I can remember this moment forever. Quite sentimental, Salino, I thought. Quite sentimental.

I choked out a cough from the rank fog of his husbandly bad breath. Salino, the serpentine husband, shouldn't have stood so close to a man with nothing to lose. There were things I was still capable of in this, my last stand. I summoned another gob of phlegm to the roof of my mouth and shot it into his face, watched it stick to his lips, drip from his grizzled chin.

Give that one to Lexa, I said. She’ll know who it’s from.

His fist lashed out and rammed my nose back into my head with a whop. I felt a road extending within me as my nose crumpled inward. He ran the knife down the front of my face and touched the blade to the gap between two front teeth. It was perfect timing to catch the snake by the neck and bite its head off.

I raised blood-soaked hands from exposed guts, grabbed hold of both of his sleeved wrists, twisted his arms back toward his face, and rammed that hunting knife right up through the cobra’s head. It was quick. The blade ripped into the skin under Salino’s chin, tore past the mouth and face, up to the peak of his domed head until Salino, her cobra husband, spit out a final diminishing hiss and nearly splintered in two. The blood splattered everywhere in a shower of red venom. I rose in explosions of pain along with the gripped knife, savoring its majesty as if it were divinity itself. I wanted to relish the moment. My stomach applauded in gusts of neon pain. Salino’s head wobbled, two clumsy eyeballs trying to focus, seeing the unseen, perhaps the monochrome, while simultaneously lolling in disbelief, probably at the fact that the head that had joined those eyes together for the entirety of their existence was literally, and oh-so-gracefully, coming undone. His head split apart just like my marriage, just like an orange.

Lexa, do you know what we could have had? I said to the dead Salino.

She was probably outside waiting for him in the Buick. I watched his body, melt and wither with droppings of slobbery goop spurting about the bed, spattering me crimson as he tumbled to the bedroom floor. Perhaps some of the cobra’s guts could be mixed with mine, I thought in a rare moment both lucid and deranged. There’s treasure in those guts. We could mingle. I huffed toward the window, considered carving out Salino’s gold tooth or scraping off the skin of his tattooed fingers. I wanted to demonstrate how evil my love could be. I wanted Lexa. I wanted to be him, the husband. Salino’s Buick was parked under the street lamp. She would be in there.

When I hobbled out the front door, I saw Lexa’s concerned face, little lonely sheep eyes, staring out from the passenger seat. I swung open the driver’s side door and threw myself behind the wheel. This is what it feels like to be a real husband, I thought, looking over at her with a blood-drenched gold-toothed grin.

My sticky hands covered her mouth to stifle that hideous shriek. Fragments of skin and letters dangled from my knuckles. A sliced chunk of Salino’s serrated facial skin hung limp, stretched over my real face. The mixture of phlegm, sweat, and blood wasn’t quite doing the trick, holding his face to my own. It was sagging. I could feel the ink of the serpent’s spit seep into my skull, drip down into the abyss of my aching guts. That bastard ink was the elixir of love. Crawl, baby.

It’s just you and me, Lexa, I said, leaning in for a wet kiss, mouth full of venom.

Interlude

2011-12-12T18:20:00.003-06:00

Just wanted to drop in for two quick notes.

Look for new stories right here tomorrow.

And, in the meantime, go check out Richard Godwin's Chin Wag with Lou Boxer. Lou may or may not be a name that you recognize but he's the co-chair of NoirCon and a great guy.

Interlude Stories: R.J. Spears

2011-11-30T09:39:00.000-06:00

HOME SCHOOLING - R.J. SPEARS

Father and son, they sat in a dark nondescript van as rosy cheeked children strolled through the crosswalk on their way to school. The father, both hands on the wheel, was just the other side of forty, with a rugged face like a lumberjack. A thin white scar ran along the edge of his chin, parallel with his mouth but was almost entirely hidden by dark stubble. The boy, riding shotgun, was fourteen and shared his father’s woodsman good looks only sans the scar and five o'clock shadow.

“Look at those kids,” the father said. “What do you think they’ll learn today in school?” He looked over at his son. “Not a helluva lot. Not as much as you learn with me in a day. Right?”

“Right, pop,” the son replied.

The light was about to change and a couple gangling, teenage boys raced to beat it. The father continued, “They’re locked all day in school while you’re out with me learning firsthand what the world is really like. I say one day of the real world is worth any month spent in a classroom. I read in a magazine that they call it experiential learning -- learning by doing something rather from a book. You know what I mean?”

The son nodded in agreement. The light changed from red to green and father navigated away from the school driving onto a main thoroughfare with only light traffic which eventually took them into a small downtown shopping district. The streets were lined with a variety of luxury cars and high end sports utility vehicles that advertised the status of the shoppers. They passed through the shopping district and into a residential area of mammoth houses with spacious park-sized lawns. The father cruised with one hand on the wheel and the other leisurely hanging outside the window of the van. The boy took in the opulent houses and mini-mansions.

“Okay, let’s check out my home schooling technique,” the father said. “It’s time for a pop quiz. That house coming up on the right,” he said pointing. “What kind of architectural style is that?”

The boy gave the house a quick visual inspection as they drove by and said, “Tudor.”

“Right,” the father replied. “Now, ask any of those egg heads back at the school if they can spot a Tudor. I bet that can’t.”

They drove down a couple blocks and stopped at an intersection. To their left, a large white colonial sat like a stately manor in the center of a well-manicured lawn with a retro-styled gazebo positioned to the right of the house. A Latino gardener pruned the hedge just the edge of the sidewalk of the neighboring house and paused to look up at the two of them in the van. The father gave him a “Hi, how are you?”abbreviated wave and drove on. “Okay, what would you say that house was worth?” the father asked.

“Three-fifty, maybe three seventy-five.”

“That’s pretty close. I would say closer to four twenty-five. I bet if they have kids, they don’t even know what the house would go for, but you, at least, can make an educated guess.” He flashed his son a quick smile.

The father took a right at the next corner and said, “We’re almost there now. You ready to learn some more?”

“Sure.”

They drove down half a block and the father turned into large stone driveway that lead up to a sprawling suburban mansion, complete with a tennis court, heated pool, and four car garage. The father navigated under a large iron gateway past the front of the house and circled around to the back where he killed the engine and they got out. The boy paused for a moment waiting for a cue from his father on what to do next.

“What do you look for first?” the father asked.

“A dog?”

“What about if you don’t see a dog outside?”

“A chain or a dog bowl.”

“That’s my boy.”

The father walked around the side of the van and opened the sliding door. He retrieved a couple sizable canvas tool bags and handed one to the boy. He pulled out a two pairs of light weight leather gloves from the van, handing a pair to the boy and they took a moment to pull them on. The father stood rigid for a moment. The pose made the boy think of a hunting dog sniffing the air for prey.

The father peered around the neighborhood and exhaled loudly. He gave his son a quick look that said, “Let’s go,” and they walked to the house.

They stopped as they reached the back door. The father chuckled and said, “You know I hate this, but I can never remember the code for these alarms.” He stuck a hand into his front pants pocket and retrieved a small sheet of paper. He showed it to his son. “And this piece of information only cost me fifty bucks.” He examined the paper then punched in a series of numbers on the keypad beside the door. He gently grabbed the doorknob, holding his hand on it for a moment, then turned the knob and they entered.

They stood just inside the back door in a short hallway that led to a cavernous kitchen as the father listened for a moment. He moved into the kitchen and the boy followed. An island stove was stationed in the middle of the room, shiny copper pots and pans hung from a circular ring attached to the ceiling just above it. To the right of the island was a large oak table for those who wanted an informal place to have a morning bagel and cup of coffee.

“Yoo-hoo, anyone home?” the father called out. His voice echoed off the walls, but died out quickly as it carried deep into the house. No response came.

“Now, why’d I do that?” the father asked.

“To see if a relative is staying over unexpectedly. Or if a maid is using the place as a rendezvous for some mid-morning delight,” the son said in a tentative voice.

“Good answer.”

They waited and when no one responded, they made their way into the house, stopping in the dining room. “Okay, what can we look for in the dining room?” the father asked.

“Silverware.”

“Yes, but in most cases what do you find?”

“Plates.”

“Good. Let’s head for the gold mine.” They headed out of the dining room and passed through the entertainment room, complete with the latest home theater system with enormous surround sound speakers. The father asked without pausing, “Why do we pass these rooms up?”

“You don’t get a good return on electronics.”

“And?” the father said stopping to look over his shoulder at the boy who had frozen in mid-step.

The boy was caught like a deer in the headlights, his expression blank but also guilty.

“The stuff is too heavy to carry,” the father said, slightly exasperated. He started moving again, “You don’t want to throw out your back and have to crawl out of the place. Or worse, have to lay like a snake with a broken back until someone comes home.”

They found themselves in the foyer standing at the base of spiral staircase that led up to the second floor. The carpet throughout the house was plush and luxurious, muffling their footsteps. “Where are we going first?” the father asked as they ascended the stairs.

“The master bedroom,” the boy replied.

They got to the top of the stairs and paused for a moment.

“Right,” the father said. He then led them down a hallway with numbered prints on the wall that reminded the father of spilled paint. He swiveled his head from side-to-side taking quick peeks into each room. He led them into the master bedroom with a large cherry sleigh bed covered with a paisley comforter. On each side of the bed were his and hers matching cherry dressers.

“You take hers, I’ll take his,” the father said and the boy moved around the bed to the woman’s dresser.

“And why do we come to the bedroom first?” the father asked while he sized up the top of the man’s dresser.

“Aaaa, jewelry,” the son responded.

“Right,” the father said, opening a drawer. He reached in and pulled out an ornate golden watch. “Rolex,” he said, holding his bounty aloft for the boy to see.

“And why do we go for jewelry?” the father asked.

“It’s easily portable and most of the time easily fenced unless it’s a one of a kind item.”

The father stopped what he was doing, turned from his son and his face held an expression of pride. “Tell me you would have learned that in school? Okay, let’s get to the bigger picture. A little philosophical, you know, the topping on all my home schooling of you. What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned?”

The boy paused just as he was about to place a jewelry box into his canvas tool bag, looked at his father with a sly smile and said, “Crime pays.”

BIO: R.J. Spears is a filmmaker and mystery writer who lives in Columbus, Ohio. His short story “Skeletons Out of the Closet” placed second in the Indianapolis Murder and Mayhem short story contest in 1997 and he is currently trying to find an agent to represent a P.I. novel set in Columbus.

Interlude Stories: Regina Clarke

2011-11-29T08:10:00.000-06:00

WISHFUL THINKING - REGINA CLARKE

Brenner called himself a private detective and he was suited to the job, as indifferent a man as Moira had ever met. Still, she needed to have a check run on Martin, and fast. Better to get it over with and if she didn’t like Brenner’s personality, it hardly mattered.

Once upon a time, she thought, as she left the investigator’s office, the world had seemed such a nice place. But not for a long time, she sighed. She was beginning to understand the desire for revenge with every broken promise Martin made, every lie, every caressing gesture made to her after he’d been with some other woman he’d found here or there.

He was home when she got back from seeing Brenner, puttering in his greenhouse, for all the world like a loyal, cheerful husband. He walked into the living room from outside when he heard her slam the door.

“Hey, Moira, what’s the problem, door get in your way?” His smile, she was sorry to realize, still made her heart turn over. It’s worked with all those other women, too, she thought. He wore the same tailored shirt and gray tie that he always did, at work or at home. She remembered how happy he had been to find twelve ties the same color on sale at Barbour’s.

“Tea?” she asked him. “And watch your feet, they’re all wet.”

“Oh, sorry, forgot,” he said, sending her a sweet smile. “Just watered up the begonias—I don’t think this new heater I got is working right. Has a short, maybe. It was ninety degrees in there, should’ve been just sixty-five. Henry said he could replace it when the next supply comes in a couple of weeks. He’s at the store now. I think I’ll just go remind him to save one for me.”

Yes, Moira thought, you go see Henry—or maybe it’s Henrietta? Carefully she made the tea the right way, not the way Martin did it, slopping a tea bag into some half-boiled water. Rinse the cup first in the hot water, put in the milk, pour a full boil, steep the tea three minutes to brew it just right.

“You British with your tea,” he’d say every time, teasing her. “Teabag does just as well.”

No, it doesn’t, she’d say to herself each time as she handed him the cup in silence, like now.

After he left, Moira went out to the greenhouse. Dappled early evening light filtered through its glass. She imagined Brenner on Martin’s tail, wasn’t that the way they described it? The idea of getting the first report excited her.

The greenhouse was so well organized. She saw the chart on the wall that Martin used to care for the plants on a rotating schedule. He was a creature of habit, no question about that. It was also very hot. Some of the geraniums he’d set out were faded and the ferns were brown at the edges. That had to be so annoying for him. But he hadn’t dismantled the new heater. Thrifty, he was. He’d use it until he got the replacement, of that she could be sure.

Two days later she pressed the fourth-floor button in the elevator to Brenner’s office. She felt a lurching in her heart, a sudden pounding, her hands sweating.

Brenner looked up from the egg salad sandwich he was eating. Bits of egg were caught on his upper lip and mayonnaise dripped onto the newspaper he was reading. With a cautious expression he wiped his mouth and motioned for her to sit down.

“Well?” Moira said, expectantly.

Brenner pulled a manila folder toward him, pushing aside the remains of his lunch.

“After work he goes every day to a garden nursery, talks to the owner. There are the photos,” he said, laying them in front of her. “Yesterday he went to his club, around five, but not all the way in, just to the lobby, explaining to some guys why he’d missed watching a game with them. Then he went home, as you know. This morning he went to his office as usual.”

“So what are you doing here—why aren’t you following him?” Moira wanted to scream it out but kept her voice even.

“I’ll be there at five, when he leaves.” Brenner was looking at her oddly.

“How do you know he hasn’t left now, skipped out a few hours?”

Brenner looked away from her out the window that let in dusty light. He didn’t want her to see the irritation he felt. The money was good. He turned back to Moira with a smooth expression on his face.

“Okay, from now on I’ll eat lunch in his parking lot. That work for you?”

Three more days passed and the reports were all the same. Every day Martin was where he said he’d be.

Maybe he knows he’s being followed, Moira suggested to Brenner. But Brenner was so nondescript she couldn’t imagine Martin noticing him for any reason. And she had been careful to show nothing but courtesy and affection whenever Martin was around her, even though it brought bile to her throat.

Brenner finally suggested they give it up. He had other cases waiting. “A guy’s fooling around,” he said, “he doesn’t wait this long to do it. I hate to say it, but nothing’s going on. Trust me.”

She left feeling intense disappointment and bewilderment. What could that mean? This was the third investigator she’d hired in as many years. Always the same results. What, what, what could it mean?

As the answer came to her, she shuddered involuntarily. It means, Moira, she said to herself, that Martin is a very boring man. She’d never imagined the possibility. She went over in her mind all the signs she’d thought she had detected. But she’d been wrong. There'd been no lies, no affairs. He’d been doing what he always said he was, for all the years they’d been married. He was just a nice, boring man. She wanted to cry. She couldn’t live with someone like that. She’d rather die first. Or maybe...

She tried to let go of the thought that came to mind.

What I need, she thought, is a good cup of tea. In the kitchen she put the kettle on and waited for the water to come to a proper, full boil, watching the gas fire so it wouldn't scorch the porcelain finish. And then she remembered the defective propane heater. Martin would come home from his office where he’d been all day just like he said, and he’d go out to the greenhouse wearing his tailored shirt and gray tie and switch the heater on at seven o’clock just as he did every single night. She could count on it. Dear, dear Martin.

Interlude Stories: Keith Gingell

2011-11-28T06:56:00.001-06:00

NOODLES - KEITH GINGELL

Noodles has been with me for about ten years now. I can remember the day we met like it was yesterday. I was having dinner with my wife at Uncle Marco’s place. An interesting feller is Uncle Marco. He’s a businessman, but nobody in our family knows what kind of business he’s in. It changes a lot. One year it’s insurance, another he’s running a café. Then he’s a football trainer or he’s selling furniture ... whatever, but he seems to do alright.

Aunty Sophia plonked a couple of bottles of Barolo on the table while she prepared the food. Marco took something out his pocket and squeezed it. A four inch blade appeared like magic and he sliced off the cork covers. He must have seen my eyes nearly pop out. I’d never been that close to something so illegal.

‘You like it?’ he said, rotating the lethal weapon between thumb and forefinger.

‘I’ve never seen a flick-knife before,’ I said.

He folded the blade and it slipped into place with a solid double-click. He stretched across the table and dropped the loaded handle next to my other cutlery.

‘’S yours.’

‘I can’t take this.’

‘Sure you can,’ he said, ‘I don’t need it anymore.’

He reached behind him and pulled a bronze coloured Colt automatic out of his belt and held it up for me to see.

‘I got this.’

We both leaned back in our chairs and laughed at the joke.

‘Is that real?’ I asked.

‘I’m building up my business. Sometimes I need to protect myself ... You want the knife?

‘I don’t know what I’ll do with it, but yes. I‘d like to keep it.’

Uncle Marco looked at me real serious. ‘It’s good for opening letters and bottles of wine, but don’t go pointing it at anybody, unless you’re prepared to use it.’

That’s how I got it. I named it after I saw “Noodles” use one just like it to kill Bugsy in the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge. To be honest, my Noodles wasn’t much use for anything other than a letter opener. It was as dull as the plastic scissors my kids used for cutting paper.

My grandfather was a barber, he showed me how to strop razors when I was a kid. Lately I’ve been working on Noodles. It’s so sharp now, I could shave a Peach ... Without soap.

Tomorrow night I’m going looking for the guy who did those things to my daughter. I’ll introduce him to Noodles, and for the first time in ten years I’ll use it for more than opening envelopes.

BIO: Keith has stories in Radepacket 3, 4 and 5. Two on Pulp Metal Magazine and four or five on Thrillers, Killers ’N’ Chillers. He is English, but lives near Antwerp in Belgium. He has been writing fiction since 2006 and has been concentrating on noir/crime for the past three years.

Interlude

2011-11-27T16:22:00.000-06:00

Richard Godwin has a new Chin Wag At The Slaughterhouse today with Austrian author Ines Eberl. Richard knows how to get you talking and thinking when he interviews you and there is never a dull moment, never a run-of-the-mill question or answer.

Have a look.

Interlude Stories: Richard Godwin

2011-11-25T09:29:00.000-06:00

ICING SHYLOCK - RICHARD GODWIN

So I’m sitting in Parkside, Anthony Federici’s place. I got connections. What the fuck, I was made at eight. There’s been a few scuffles in the administration, nothing major. Only a few dead bodies. I’ve just ordered Osso Bucco, I can smell the veal sizzling. I love a bone with a hole, and my comare Graziella has her hand on my thigh. Her nails are Chianti red as she slides her fingers upwards when he walks in. Freddy the fucking Shylock. No more than a babania, a babo.

‘So, Tony, how’s it going?’ he says, laying his sweaty palm on my shoulder.

I check my Armani suit for grease marks and catch the angry flicker in Graziella’s eyes.

‘Good, I’m a little busy right now but-’

He cuts me off.

‘There’s a little something owing,’ he say, cupping his hand next to my ear.

I return his gaze and watch his eyes wander down Graziella’s cleavage, hovering at the edge of her La Senza bra.

Look, I gotta tell you this guy’s a cafone, his mother used to hide him under shopping when she took him out, you know. He’s got this puckered face. Gotta pay for his snatch. I ain’t respecting some smart ass like that. But they call me Tony Two Times and I stand by my name. I always give them a chance. I mean, you gotta play fair, right?

‘Excuse me,’ I say to Graziella, and leave her sipping her Prosecco.

I wander the marble corridor.

‘What the fuck do you think coming here and embarrassing me like that? Do you know I’m getting married?’

He smiles, flashing his big yellow teeth at me. It’s ugly his smile, like someone cracked an egg on his fucking face and I think of pliers, my favourite tool. I like to remove their teeth when I’m on a hit, one by fucking one. It’s surprising how much information you can get like that. Crack. Scream. Crack. Scream.

They whine like little girls. They want their mommas. They pray to Christ.

I was hired once to get some vig. Some smart ass reneged on his debts. I like that word renege. So I kidnapped the guy’s son and friend. I called him, I gave him a chance. The asshole never paid. I killed them with a broken Corona bottle and drank a cup of the son’s blood. That was before I gave up coke.

Now I look at Freddy and see he’s nothing more than an empty suit.

‘I’ll get you the money,’ I say, ‘next week.’

He shakes his head.

I can see he’s enjoying this.

‘Na.’

‘You know what’s happening in a few days?’ I say. ‘Me and Graziella, I’m a fucking earner.’

He starts to walk away.

‘Not good enough, Tony, bye bye.’

He waves and that’s when it comes to me. I have to do it. The guy’s half a hard-on with a suitcase, he’s a fucking problem, got no respect. He needs to go. I’ll do it for Graziella. She’s a fucking diamond, my best asset.

‘OK, I’ll pay it,’ I say.

He stops.

‘When?’

‘Now.’

I go through to Graziella and she flashes her eyes at me.

‘I’ll only be a few minutes.’

While Freddy’s waiting, I steal out front and slash one of his tyres. Then I walk with him to his Benz.

‘Hey, what the fuck?’ he says.

I lay a hand on his shoulder.

‘Kids these days,’ I say. ‘I’ll change it in two minutes.’

He opens the trunk and hands me the jack. Dumb fuck. I smash his head in, bundle him inside, and drive him to Long Island.

The night’s like black velvet as I cut his gut open, release the gases, and weigh him down. Not a murmur, he sinks like a stone.

Back at Parkside, Graziella’s a little mad, but she soon calms down. I marry her two days later. Tony Federici puts the call through for me and I pay my debt. Fuck, she’s his only daughter. Freddy was small time.

These Young Turks, what do they know? Me, I’m enjoying the finest comare snatch this side of Sicily.

Interlude Stories: Andy Henion

2011-11-24T08:16:00.000-06:00

DANDELION - ANDY HENION

They lie on the floor, naked and intertwined, like the couple on the painting above the fireplace. He’s still inside her, wilting now, hands wrapped around her slender throat. This is not his house, but he adores the painting. Man and Woman in Garden. Plans to take it when they leave.

After many minutes she shudders and pushes him away, gasping. Curls into a freckled ball.

He laces his fingers behind his head and stares up at the painting. It’s bigger than anything he’s seen, life-sized, so big he’ll have to remove the gold frame to get it in the trunk of his Pontiac, parked down the street off a weedy two-track. From here he plans to head west to Kalamazoo and down into Chicago, where he’ll find them another house or garage or outbuilding to stay for a few nights, but even in the big city he’ll fight the urge to pawn the painting, the way he pawns just about everything else, for he means one day to put it above their fireplace, in their house, on their woodsy lot. Somewhere down in California, maybe even Mexico, three or four kids running about. A storybook setting that belies his upbringing.

“Do you see them?” he says, pointing to the painting. “The dandelions?”

She ignores the question, holding her throat. She was raised in a house like this, but only in theory. Her own little hellhole. When they met, on a cool, rainy day, she was working at the bookstore and he was stealing books, this slick, longhaired stranger with a definite intensity about him. She followed him to the parking lot and climbed in the rusty Pontiac with the out-of-state plates, and when he looked into her dark eyes he knew better than to ask questions.

“You’re my dandelion,” he says now.

“Don’t call me that.”

“Why?”

“They’re fucking weeds,” she says, thinking, for the hundredth time, she’s made a terrible mistake hitching her wagon to this Neanderthal.

He’s reaching for a fistful of her long brown hair, ready to teach her another lesson, when they hear the garage door. He scrambles for his clothes, more specifically for the nine-millimeter atop the pile, but she’s already there, she already has it.

Pointing it at him.

“Nice recon job,” she says. “Gone another week, huh?”

“We gotta move,” he says. “No fuckin’ time for this.”

“Sure there is,” she says, and shoots him in the face. But she’s never fired a gun, and the slug travels low and tears through his cheek, exposing teeth. He makes a sound, somewhere between a growl and a gurgle, and holds his arms up, pleading. Two hands on the grip now, easy breaths, and the next slug finds its target and drops him where he stands.

She looks over to see the homeowner standing there. He’s a tall, well-built man, more than twice her age, but regal looking, with a strong chin, powerful hands. And cufflinks: She’s never seen a man with cufflinks.

Instead of terror on his face, there’s only curiosity as he takes in her bruised, naked body.

“Better off dead, I take it?”

She shrugs. They’re out in the forest, no neighbors for miles. The recon said he was divorced, kids grown, a frequent business traveler with money to burn.

“I can help with this,” he says, motioning to the gory heap on the floor. She understands his meaning, but holds his stare in a desperate attempt to see through to his true nature. He has an easy way about him, kind blue eyes, but even at nineteen she knows it’s an impossible task, reading men.

The gun in her hand gives her choices. But she better make one soon, because the regal man is easing toward her with a familiar look in his eye.

Interlude Stories: Mary Ann Back

2011-11-23T09:10:00.002-06:00

PRIME CUT - MARY ANN BACK

A woman with five legs sat next to me on the Chicago “L”. Two of the legs were hers. The other three were prosthetics, banging, clanging and tumbling their way out of a canvas tote she carried. I tried not to stare, but it was impossible. My eyes kept darting back to those legs - sun-kissed, shapely and life-like. They were fascinating. Concerned that I was beginning to look like Sling Blade, or a serial killer, I stopped the eye darting and smiled.

“They’re broken,” she said, as if that explained everything.

“So you cut them off?”

“They’re prosthetics.”

“Well, that’s a relief.”

She giggled. “I’m a prosthetics technician.”

“Aah, of course. Let’s put your bag over here.”

I moved my tool bag to the floor and placed her tote next to me. She’d handed it to me with no hesitation – so submissive, so trusting.

“There, that’s better, isn’t it?” I asked, peering into her eyes.

She was sexy in that I-have-no-idea-I’m-hot kind of way. Good Me wanted to leave her alone. But her eyes smiled back, flashing gratitude and maybe a hint of something more. I turned him off like a switch. Sometimes I wondered about Good Me.

“Yes, that’s much better. You didn’t have to move your bag. Thank you, Sir.”

“Sir? You’re killing me. My father is sir. Just call me Jack.”

“Then thank you, Jack. I’m Amber.”

She extended her hand to me, fragile and delicate; mine swallowed it whole. I tried to focus on her face, but my eyes drifted to her legs. They were svelte and flawless, tawny like the legs in the tote. My free hand drifted to the bag and found itself brushing against the cool smooth surface of one of those legs. A shiver swept my spine.

“The pleasure’s mine, Amber. Besides, my tool bag doesn’t have anything cool in it like spare legs, so your tote gets the seat.”

“What kind of tools do you have?”

“They’re for carving.”

“Like wood carving? Sweet - maybe I’ve seen your work in town?”

“Not likely.”

Chit-chat had served its purpose. It was time to close the deal. “So which station’s yours?”

“Ashland and 163rd.”

“There’s a coincidence; that’s my stop. What street did you say you live on?”

“I didn’t.”

Her voice was flat; the silence that followed absolute.

I’d pushed too hard - time to regroup.

“Jesus, I’m sorry. That sounded like a come on, didn’t it? I’m so embarrassed. Look, I’m old enough to be your father. All I could think about was how late it is, and how I wouldn’t want my daughter trying to make her way home at this hour by herself, lugging a bag of body parts through the south side. There are a lot of creeps out there, Amber. I was just trying to look out for you. No hard feelings, right? Tell you what. How about you let me pay cab fare to make sure you get home, okay?”

“It’s alright. I’ll be fine. I’m not parked that far from the station. I can drive home from there.”

“Do an old man a favor, huh? Let me walk you to your car. I’ll sleep better knowing I got you there in one piece. Your dad would want you to be safe. Do it for him. Please?”

She flashed me that sweet hot little smile. All was forgiven. Ying and yang were back in balance.

When the train pulled into the station, I swung her bag-o-legs over my shoulder. We walked out into the night toward her car. Good Me had stepped up his game – he was on a mission to get her there in one piece. But Bad Me wasn’t giving up. He made sure to grab my carving tools as we left the train.

It was anybody’s guess which Me would win.

BIO: Ms. Back, of Mason, Ohio, was awarded the 2009 Bilbo Award for creative writing by Thomas More College. Her writing has appeared in many publications, including: Short Story America, Every Day Fiction, Bete Noir, Eclectic Flash, The Loyalhanna Review, Flashes in the Dark, and Flash Shot.

Interlude Stories: Mary Ann Back

2011-11-23T09:10:00.000-06:00

LOLA - MARY ANN BACK

Stiffs had a way of piling up at The Blue Note Lounge. I made it my business to stay out of that pile, which wasn’t easy for a gin-swilling, shit-for-brains mook like me. I sat at the bar slouched behind a copy of the Times, popping peanuts and tossing back Tanqueray, eyeing the door like it was the muzzle of a gun. Typical night for a gumshoe. But this time it was personal. I was expecting a dame. And she was inching me closer to that pile of stiffs than I wanted to get.

It started yesterday when Big Dom Genovese gets me on the horn. I was into him for ten large on account of betting a horse that turned into glue in the middle of the track. Dom wanted a favor.

“Pauly,” he calls me Pauly, “You tail my wife, Loretta. Tell me who she’s stepping out with. You do this for me we’re even, capiche?”

“Sure, Dom,” I says, thinking I got off easy. “You want I should dance on his face a little?”

“Naw, Pauly. That’s okay. He won’t have no face when I get done with him.”

So, he gives me a picture of wifey. My mouth goes dry and my eyes burn ‘cause they can’t blink. She’s all boobs, legs, and hair. A long, tall drink of water, with double D’s so firm they’d poke your eyes out. It was an okay picture, but it didn’t do her justice. The eyes were wrong; they looked sad and lonely. She wasn’t sad. And she sure as hell wasn’t lonely. I should know. I’d been the one putting a smile on her face three nights a week for the last six months.

She might have been Dom’s Loretta. But she was my Lola. And I made her eyes dance like the fucking Rockettes.

The door opened and rain swept into the bar. Lola stood in the doorway. A street light behind her burned through the swirling fog, making her look like an angel. She sauntered up to the bar, hips swaying like coconut palms in the breeze, pouty red lips wrapped around a Lucky, working it soft and slow.

I thought of the last time we were together, when it was me in her mouth. I was way past wanting her. I needed her more than air.

“Hey, Baby. Miss me?” Her breath hot and moist in my ear.

“Have we met? I’m Pauly. Loretta, isn’t it?”

Her smile disappeared. The scent of fear skunked her Chanel No.5.

“He’ll kill us both if he finds out, Pauly. You know that, don’t you?”

“Why’d you lie to me, Baby?”

“At first it didn’t matter. It was just a fling. Sure I should have told you later, but I was afraid I’d lose you. You’re not gonna leave me, are you Pauly-baby?” Her voice shook and the waterworks started.

“The only way I’m leaving you is in a pine box, Dollface. But we gotta amscray! Stop your blubbering.” I handed her my handkerchief and chucked her under the chin.

She wiped her eyes and moved between my legs. She wallpapered herself against me and stuck her tongue down my throat. I was lost alright, lost in her scent, lost in her taste, and lost in her eyes. So fucking lost I didn’t notice the back door open.

“You’re not too bright, are you, Pauly?” It was Big Dom and two of his mopes.

“Let the dame go, Dom. She’s nothing but a two-bit floozy. It’s me you want!”

“What’dya say, Baby? Once more - for old time sake?” He grabbed at Lola.

I plugged him with my snub-nose through the pocket of my trench coat and nailed the other two goons before his head hit the floor.

“Let’s blow this popsicle stand!” I yelled, pulling Lola out the door.

We ran down 53rd street leaving Big Dom and the body count piled high at the Blue Note. Life was good. I was in a spin, loving the spin I was in. All for a woman.

Her name was Lola – she was a show-girl.

BIO: Ms. Back, of Mason, Ohio, was awarded the 2009 Bilbo Award for creative writing by Thomas More College. Her writing has appeared in many publications, including: Short Story America, Every Day Fiction, Bete Noir, Eclectic Flash, The Loyalhanna Review, Flashes in the Dark, and Flash Shot.

Introduction To Night Call by Dot King

2011-11-22T10:13:00.001-06:00

A while back, I created a character that was a deaf hitman. Not to toot my own horn too much, but there was pretty good response to it, so much, in fact, that Jimmy Callaway took it upon himself to write a story about my deaf hitman character. Joyce Juzwik and Chad Eagleton followed suit and all three writers, in their own way, brought something new out of the character, something that I’m not sure that I would have thought of on my own. Each story was brilliant.

Flash forward to last week and Dot King decided to contact Graham Smith and ask him if she could continue where he left off with LONELY NIGHTS.

Graham gave Dot his blessing and it was off to the races for Dot. She ran the copy past Graham before sending it on to me and the rest, as they say, is history.

I think you will agree that Dot’s story, while answering some questions left unanswered in LONELY NIGHTS, raises new questions and stands as a nice addition to Graham’s tale.

Without further ado, Dot King’s NIGHT CALL.

Interlude Stories: Dot King

2011-11-22T10:13:00.000-06:00

NIGHT CALL - DOT KING

And that was when the hand grabbed her by the throat...

In that instant, unconnected, simultaneous reactions assailed her: a feeling that something was familiar, should be, yet she couldn't seize, hold on to it; a strange, dangerous comfort that she was going to die: no more TV dinners, no more empty, lonely nights, relief from that torpor of all-consuming sadness ... feelings that were thrust aside by raw instinct screaming in her head « BREATHE ».

She couldn't. Nor could she see. She realised with a shock that her attacker's other hand was over her eyes. Her arms and hands were useless, unable to connect with those pressing her down on the bed, blocked by his arms. She was dimly aware of her hand releasing her cellphone and by the muffled skittering noise as it hit the floor, she knew it had slid under the bed.

Kicking out, she tried to bend her knees to get some purchase on the counterpane, to push away, lessen his grip, but it slipped away beneath her until her right arm, in its flailing, connected only with air as the top part of her body was pushed over the edge of the bed. She felt the pressure increase on her neck until she thought it would snap and still the voice in her head commanded « BREATHE ».

From somewhere, she thought she heard another, external voice. Then she knew she'd heard a voice, was still hearing it: « Police. Are you there? You have called the police. Please state your name ... » For a split second the pressure on her throat eased as her attacker tried to assess what he too was hearing. Susie needed no more time than this. Her hand connected with the empty glass from the night before, grasped it, lifted it, smashed it, dragged the jagged edge along the underside of his arm, elbow to wrist.

Liquid warmth ran over her hand and dripped down on to her chest. As the pain from the wound kicked in, the man gasped and raised the hand that held her throat. Susie dragged in a breath. It made her dizzy, but already her hand was arcing over for another slash. Into the side of his face. « You. Bitch! » Again. Again. The hand over her eyes yanked away.

In the darkness she scrambled back, away from him. He was holding his face, covering it, his head flung back. As her sight adjusted and her breathing steadied, she could see dark stains oozing between his fingers. He moaned loudly.

« Hey, what's going on there? »

The cellphone. Had she still had her finger on the call button when he grabbed her? She opened her mouth to yell. Her throat burned and her voice was no more than a strangled rasp. He was getting up from the bed.

Get out! Go!

Keeping her eyes on the man, back to the wall, Susie edged around the bedroom to the door. On the pale bedcover the dark stain was spreading. With every breath, the man moaned. He was standing, swaying.

The cellphone tinnily interrogated « Where are you? »

Finally, the open door, the landing, the stairs. Susie struggled with the multiple security locks on the front door, glancing behind her every couple of seconds. The man's moans seemed louder in the silence of the carpeted hallway. A thud from above panicked her.

Sliding the last bolt with trembling fingers, turning the handle made slippery with blood, she stumbled out into the yard, tried to fill her burning lungs with night air, but could only take small panting breaths. If they were all she had, then she would manage. Barefoot, she made her way to her car, vaguely hoping the keys might be on the dashboard. They weren't. Three miles on foot to the town. Auto-pilot.

The officer on the desk recognised Susie, took in her bleeding feet, blood-soaked pyjamas and the bruising on her neck and cheekbones. He called a doctor and asked a female colleague to lead her through to a quiet office where, in a halting, absent monotone, she told her tale. After hearing of her ordeal the desk sergeant immediately called control to dispatch officers to her house, only to discover they were on their way after her unanswered 999 call had been traced.

Passively, she sat silent while the doctor cleaned and dressed her feet and examined the bruising. She was helped out of her pyjamas and given a washed-out tracksuit. The world was cotton wool. She could not speak. She could not think. She had survived, that was all.

The radio on the officer's belt crackled. Reporting in from the house. Did Susie feel strong enough to go out there? She nodded distractedly.

As she was helped from the car, medics were carrying a stretcher from the house. She heard muffled, disjointed phrases. «Alive. Just. Lost a lot ... blood. Maybe lose ... eye. Unconscious. Pull through. »

« Do you think you could look at him? Perhaps you can identify him... if you feel up to it. »

Susie assented. Part of her picked up a distant, detached, flinty quality to the officer's voice. She looked at him, wondering. The woman officer walked her to the gurney, nodded to one of the medics who shone a light on to the devastated face of the man.

As unconsciousness finally pulled her under, Susie breathed his name, « Mike. »

Introduction To Lonely Night by Graham Smith

2011-11-18T09:07:00.003-06:00

Graham Smith made waves in the crime/noir fiction community last month when he wrote ANNIE’S STORY for Thrillers, Killers N Chillers. The story was published and then taken down, due to its content and some outrage at said content. Some outrage may be an overstatement. There were, as far as I know, only two, maybe three people that objected to the story.

As soon as I found out the particulars to the situation, I extended an invitation to Graham to publish his story at ATON.

There are two rules here at ATON that I live by when I publish stories:

The writer is god.

And

The editor is god.

When these two rules rub each other the wrong way, then there is trouble. Being a writer myself, and I think the numerous writers that I have published here can attest, there is rarely trouble.

Content has only been a problem once in all of the stories that I have published and only then because a writer had written a character that ingested cyanide and somehow lived, going into a semi-comatose state so that she could be snuck into another country, and is revived by the end of the story. Needless to say, this is not what happens when one ingests cyanide and I felt it was only asking for trouble if I published the story. I clearly explained to the writer that this was the reason why I was not publishing it. The writer didn't take it too well but I stand by my decision.

As far as I was concerned, Graham’s story was not the easiest thing to read and it made one’s skin crawl (and not least for the surface content but the subtext, as well). But isn’t that why we read fiction, to be amazed, to be touched, to be moved in one direction or another, to be outraged, to be angered and, yes, to be horrified?

In the end, Graham decided that he did not want to have ANNIE’S STORY republished at ATON, preferring to leave the entire situation and move on.

While it’s not the decision that I would have made, I respect his decision. It’s his story and he has the final say.

The following story, LONELY NIGHTS, I think you will agree, is top-notch and showcases Graham’s talent for keeping you on the edge of your seat. And damn does Graham know how to end a story.

Without further ado...

Interlude Stories: Graham Smith

2011-11-18T09:07:00.000-06:00

LONELY NIGHTS - GRAHAM SMITH

Susie got in from work and pulled a ready meal from the freezer. Putting it into the microwave, she got a knife, fork and plate ready, switching on the kettle as she moved around the huge farmhouse kitchen.

It had been Mike’s idea to buy this place and he was steadily renovating the place between other paying building jobs. She’d never wanted to live in the country until he’d shown her this place and explained his vision. She’d bought into his dream immediately and they had scrimped and saved to finance the mortgage and the necessary repairs and alterations.

Now it was back on the market. A rotten scaffold plank had given way beneath Mike’s boot and he had fallen to his death. Now she lived alone in the big farmhouse. No pets, no family and the nearest neighbour over a mile away down the rutted access road.

When the microwave beeped its culinary finale, she removed the fish pie and tipped its unappetising mess onto her plate. Carrying the plate through to the lounge, she switched on the TV in time to catch the seven o’clock news update on Sky News.

Despairing at the plethora of misery presented from around the world, she shoveled the food into her mouth uncaring of its bland tastelessness. It was nourishment. That was all; purely and simply fuel to keep her body going. Since Mike’s fall two months ago, she had struggled to take any pleasure from any act. Books were half read, films were watched in an uncomprehending daze, food was eaten not savoured. The purpose had gone from her life and she was little more than an empty shelled zombie, sleepwalking her way through the tatters of her life.

Ironically her job was what gave her the most satisfaction and by throwing herself into her work she could forget the tragedy for whole minutes at a time. Never had accounting seemed so interesting. Normally the intricacies of tax law left her bored to tears. Now they stopped the tears flowing.

After channel-hopping aimlessly for a couple of hours, she gave it up for a bad job and went to bed. Since Mike’s death, bed had become a haven. She was safe there, surrounded by the smell of him on the sheets. His pillow was her comfort blanket and each night, after taking a sleeping pill, she cuddled the pillow to her body and dreamt of him, smelling his aftershave and the salty tang of her tears.

*

Susie awoke, bleary-eyed and confused. Her subconscious had heard an unfamiliar noise and had prodded her awake. Unsure as to whether it was a dream or not, she sat up and listened intently. Nothing. No strange noises, no unknown sounds. A cow lowed in the distance but that sound was familiar. Now awake, she decided to get up and check the house anyway. Although not timid by nature, she was still unnerved enough to creep around checking doors and windows, until she had determined the house was secure.

As she’d made her way around the house, she’d grabbed her mobile from the coffee table and now it rested on her bedside table next to the lamp, alarm clock and the ever-present glass of water.

Sleep came harder a second time, but it eventually returned and she retreated back to her dreams of Mike. The time when he’d proposed, their first meeting, their first kiss and their first glorious weekend away together.

*

This time, her unconscious didn’t so much prod her awake as kick her. Hard! Her hand shot out to switch the lamp on and knocked the glass to the floor where it collided with last night’s glass in a sudden crash startling her further. Again she listened; again nothing untoward assaulted her ears. Shadows flitted across the window. Investigating, she discovered they were caused by the oak in the garden, blowing against the moon’s low-slung light.

Nervous adrenaline was coursing through her veins so she set off on a second inspection of the house. Only, this time, she had her mobile in one hand with the number for the police already dialed and her thumb on the call button. In the other hand, she carried a long shard of broken glass retrieved from her bedside. Room by room, she toured the house. She switched every light on. Made noise, deliberately announcing her progress. She wanted to scare off any intruder so she didn’t have to confront them. Still no sounds or noises came. The kitchen was the last room to check and, when it too was found to be secure and vacant, she started chastising herself. ‘Silly cow, total overreaction. What’s next, being scared of my own shadow?’

Switching off the lights, she went upstairs where, after quickly tidying up the broken glass, she went back to bed.

And that was when the hand grabbed her by the throat.

Interlude Stories: Jim Harrington

2011-11-17T12:16:00.000-06:00

CLEAVAGE - JIM HARRINGTON

It’s no fun having sex with an alien.

Her name is Jenny. We used to be best friends. We used to be married. Sex used to mean something. Then she changed.

She turned thirty and decided to be somebody else, someone I didn’t recognize. She cut her hair short, dyed it red, got a tattoo of a macaw over her left breast, and started talking funny--like she was on drugs. I didn’t mind the hair or the language. I hated the damn parrot.

She ran away twice, once with her yoga instructor. I hunted her down and welcomed her back both times. When she tried to leave again ... I had to stop her.

It wasn’t always like this. We met at a college frat party. Jenny’s major was art history, mine biology. She acted like she wasn’t interested in me, but I knew better. It was during Spring Break in Cancun our junior year when she finally came around. We married that August, ignoring her parents’ concerns, and were very happy -- despite not having children. The quack doctor said I was impotent.

Jenny is still the prettiest woman I know. She’s lying on the bed, her eyes and mouth open, the look of pain and surprise gone. A sheen of sweat from our lovemaking covers her naked body and glistens in the moonlight coming through the open window, the beacon accompanied by the sounds of the night critters that surround the cabin. Jenny never liked this place. Said she was a city girl and always would be. Guess it doesn’t matter now.

The sun will be coming up over the lake in a few minutes. I’ll call the police shortly after that, or maybe I’ll take a shower first. I’m not going anywhere. Everyone will know I killed her, especially since it’s my hunting knife sticking up from between her naked breasts, blood oozing around the blade. I threatened to harm her every time I had too much to drink, which I wouldn’t have done if she hadn’t turned herself into an alien.

BIO: Jim discovered flash fiction in 2007, and he’s read, written, studied, and agonized over the form since. His Six Questions For... blog provides editors and publishers a place to “tell it like it is.” In his spare time, he serves as the flash fiction editor for Apollo’s Lyre.

Interlude Stories: Clair Dickson

2011-11-17T10:43:00.000-06:00

THE SECOND FALL: A BO FEXLER STORY - CLAIR DICKSON

Originally published at Muzzle Flash in February 2007

“Eve,” she said as both greeting and introduction.

“I thought that after the apple, Eve realized she had to be clothed,” I commented.

“Finally, someone who can appreciate the irony.” She smoothed the tiny tube top and adjusted her tiny shorts. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m Bo Fexler, private investigator. I’m looking for Holly Smalls.”

“You’re awful pretty to be a private eye.” Then, she invited me into her mobile home by wordlessly stepping aside.

“What do you know about Holly’s disappearance?”

“Who hired you for that, anyway?” She slid coyly onto the couch, arching her back so her boobs stuck out.

I gazed steadily at her face. “All looks, no brains. You make things hard for those of us with both.”

Eve didn’t like that and put on a pouty face. She wet her lips in a way practiced for seduction. “Do you like girls?” she asked in a little voice.

“I like everyone the same,” I answered. I kept the punch line to myself. Then, I pressed again. “Holly Smalls.”

“Nobody would come looking for me like this.”

“I’m getting paid for this. Otherwise I’d be at home with Raymond.”

“Your man?” she squeaked in distress, confirming my suspicions.

“Chandler. An author.”

“Oh. Do you have a man?”

“Sometimes. Until I get bored.”

Eve smiled. “Holly likes men, too. Lots of them.”

“Do you know why she wouldn’t tell her mother about that?”

Eve laughed at my joke, even though it wasn’t a very good one. “Holly wasn’t the good girl her parents wanted her to be. She liked to go out to clubs. She’d come over here afterwards to sleep it off.”

“Then you know where she went?”

“No.”

“It’s a good thing Holly’s gone.” With the bait on the hook, I cast the line. “Because now, you’re available.”

Eve was done playing coy. She sat up, planted her feet on the thin floor and leaned forwards. “I know his name, only I don’t know where they were going. He said he had a place on a lake. His name was Dale Weaver. She met him at a club. They slept together a bunch of times, and then he invited her up to his cabin.”

“How long were they together?”

“A couple of weeks.”

“Did you go clubbing with Holly?”

“No. Not much fun.”

“Gets old, doesn’t it? All that male attention.”

She smiled knowingly. “It can.”

“You find many dates?”

“Some.”

“Holly’s parents don’t know, do they? That you’re lesbian.”

Eve shook her head, a flicker of a frown.

“Come on, Eve. You may be a good seductress, but you’re a bad liar. They knew. They didn’t want Holly around you.” She looked down. “That’s why you bought that trailer in Webberville.”

Suddenly, she fixated on me, her mouth agape.

“Like I said, darling, you make things hard on those of us with both beauty and brains. You called there, repeatedly, on your cell phone. The police never connected it because the cell phone’s still in your ex’s name. Only your ex likes tall blonds just as much as you do.”

Eve smiled weakly. “Okay, okay. She’s in Webberville. In a trailer we bought. Once things settled down, I was going to move out there. But it’s not like you think. We’re just friends.”

“Didn’t work out as a couple, huh?”

“Damn. You’re sharp.”

“Thanks. I don’t suppose you’d give me the address. So I can do my job, you know.”

“I dunno,” Eve smiled, coy again. Her default.

I tried again. “If I don’t get paid, I can’t take you out to dinner or anything.”

“Oh?”

“Like, on a Friday night.”

“Well. That’s different. 412 Creekside Way. Little blue one.”

“Thank you.”

“Wait. Friday night.”

“What about it?”

“Aren’t we-- aren’t you taking me out?”

“What? I never said that.”

“Yes--”

“No. I didn’t. You heard what you wanted. Besides, Eve, you try too hard. Seduction should be subtle.”

“Bo—was anything you said ... true?” Eve asked as I stepped outside.

“Sure.” I smiled amusedly, lit a cigarette, and walked back to my car, watched by Eve. The first girl—to my knowledge—to fall that hard for me.

BIO: Bo Fexler has appeared in more than 50 short stories in over 17 publications. Clair Dickson writes about every evils when she’s not working one of her many part time jobs or chasing after her young son. Visit www.bofexler.wordpress.com for links to more short stories.

Interlude Stories: Joe Clifford

2011-11-16T10:30:00.000-06:00

A MATTER OF TRUST - JOE CLIFFORD

“Drive!” I scream as I drop the bag and reach across my battered, bleeding body to slam the door shut. My right arm dangles at my side, useless.

“Where?” she asks.

“Just drive. And take it easy. These roads are icy deathtraps, and I don’t want to end up in a culvert.”

I try to brush the snow and ice from my hair but I’m having hard time moving, breathing, and wince with every motion. I’m pretty sure I broke some ribs when I slid down the embankment and flopped on the drainpipe. But at least the bullet went through. I think. I bonked my head pretty good, too. My brain feels like a blender on frappe.

I don’t know how I managed to even get up, or make it into the middle of the old access road on two feet, let alone aim my gun into the only pair of headlights I saw in a middle of a goddamn blizzard. And considering the motel where we’d been holed up, the Candlelight, is in the sticks, it’s a goddamn miracle anyone was out this time of night at all.

But I think I’ll hold off thanking God just yet.

“I’m not sure where you want me to drive—”

“Listen, honey,” I say, “I’ll let you know when to turn, OK?” I give her the once over. It’s hard to see in the dark. There are no lights out here. She’s got something covering her head, but blonde tendrils poke out. I can’t tell how old. Pretty young, though. She looks put together, everything where it should be, pert little nose. Something about her feels vaguely familiar, probably because I grew up around here and the women are all the same.

I should tell her that if she does what I say, she’ll be OK, but I don’t particularly care about pleasantries right now. My brother is missing. The kid is dead. I’ve been shot and the cops are after me.

How did it all turn to such shit?

*

I didn’t like the job from the start. Too many deviations, wrinkles outside the norm. The reason I’ve been successful this long is I never stray from what works. You can’t do this alone; you need guys you can trust, and the only person I felt safe working with was my brother, Ash. We’d been in this business since we were kids, from liquor stores to armored cars; and while other guys have done long stretches, neither one of us had so much as seen a jail cell overnight. And it hadn’t been a matter of luck.

The first problem was the job itself. The pros have two tiers, the guys who arrange the job, and the ones who pull it off. Peter Prince did the arranging, and Ash and I did the stealing. Prince was a hairy beast of man from the islands who always smelled like cinnamon. But he was rock solid as they come, a stand-up guy. It was a partnership that had been lucrative for both sides for a long time.

Ash and I had rules we lived by, one of the biggest being never work close to home. And this job was practically in our backyard.

The game this time was stones. These days, diamonds were usually too much of a headache to even bother. Security systems, armed escorts, a royal pain in the ass. Not like in the old days, when a couple salesmen carried them in trays in the trunk, driving town to town to show prospective buyers the new cuts just shipped in. It was a simpler time then. But Prince had gotten a line on a couple boys doing it old school.

Word was Edmund Herschlin was getting out of the business, too old to give a fuck about joining the high-tech parade. Ol’ Ed was the last independent jeweler in the North and he’d be liquidating in our neighborhood. Most of his boys were old farts left over from the Truman administration. They rarely carried guns, and if they did, they wouldn’t know how to fire the damn things.

Ash and I were coming off a shaky job over in Chicago, payroll deposit on the Gray Line, probably the closest we’d come to getting caught. In fact, when Ash didn’t show up at the rendezvous, I was certain our streak was over. Or at least his was. I should’ve known better than to doubt him.

But it scared me. It’s a criminal cliché, I know, one last job, but after Chicago, I really was thinking of hanging it up. At least for a while. A good long while.

Then this fell in our lap. Ash convinced me, if I were serious about quitting, to take the easy money. Hard to argue. I wouldn’t be getting a 9-to-5 anytime soon.

Except that when it looks too good to be true, it usually is. And it’s never just a matter of money.

*

The winter wind lashes along the old country posts, wobbling the tin sign that reads Old State Road 23. Or maybe it’s my brain that’s wobbling. It’s all coming down now, snow, sleet, ice, the heavens pitching a violent fit. With the weather, she takes it slow. I keep my eyes peeled, front and in back. No cars, either direction.

“Expecting someone?” she asks.

“Just drive.” I kick the medicine bag with the stones at my feet, pull the cigarettes from my inside pocket with my good arm, slide one up. I jab in the dash’s lighter. My right side throbs. I’m pretty sure it went through. Why won’t it stop bleeding?

The lighter pops. She reaches over. “Here, let me.” She holds the cherry-red tip steady as I lean forward for a big inhale.

These tiny towns spread out up here, but I know Rochester can’t be more than forty, fifty miles straight ahead. There, I can make calls, find out what the fuck happened. But in this weather, who knows how long that’s going to take, and I’m not feeling so hot.

Then the pain hits, a long lasting wave that I can feel through every nerve cell, all the way to the back of my teeth, which start to chatter, before involuntarily clamping down.

“What am I supposed to do if you die in my car?”

I try to sit up, gritting my teeth. “I’m not going to die. A bullet went in and out. I’m going to be fine. Now you do what I tell you, you’ll be fine, too.”

“I’m not a nurse, but—” Icy rain continues to pelt through the snow, thrumming the windshield “—maybe we should pull off.”

“Where do you think we can pull off, lady? We’re in the middle of a goddamn blizzard, in the middle of goddamn nowhere. There’s a roadside motel back up that hill where you picked me up. And if you think we’re going back there, you’re nuts. Just drive.” I pause. I’m feeling funny, starting to get a little paranoid.

I bring the gun up to her head. “What are you even out for on a night like this?”

She keeps her cool, eyes locked on the road. “I’m leaving my husband, if you must know.”

I lower the gun. “You might’ve picked a better night. Not that I don’t appreciate the ride.”

“The night sort of picked me, if you know what I mean.”

Yeah. I guess I do.

She reaches into the center console, pulls out a bottle of water. “At least drink this.”

I twist the cap off with my teeth. Take a slug, then rinse the blood from my mouth, pour it on my wound.

“Sorry about your car,” I say.

She smiles. “Don’t worry about it. It belongs to my husband.”

*

Being right in our backyard bothered me. How neat it all seemed bothered me. Usually either one of those things should’ve been enough for me to pull up.

Then Prince made a last minute addition. Said we needed a wheelman, just in case, and that he had the perfect guy.

The kid’s name was Danny Bunyan. Neither Ash nor I had ever heard of him, and we got in a big fight over it.

“How long we known Prince?” Ash said.

He didn’t need me to answer.

“Prince says you’re good people, you’re good people.”

Ash was right. I owed it to him to at least meet the kid.

The meet and greet was set up at Waylon’s, a truck stop in Zumbrota. We were told this Danny was young and that he would be wearing a blue ball cap. He was wearing a blue ball cap, all right. And he was young. Really young.

We had beers, talked particulars, and right away Danny put me at ease. He talked a good game. Mostly, he’d worked as a wheelman, but he’d been a bagman plenty. He told some stories. I listened for holes in his stories, anything out of place, but my bullshit meter didn’t twitch. And the longer we sat in the roadside, the more I really started liking the kid. He reminded me of me when I was just starting out.

A car horn beeped, and I tensed.

“Relax,” Danny said, “that’s just my sister.”

“What the fuck?”

“My brother’s right,” Ash said. “You can’t have your sister coming around.”

“She thinks I’m filling out an application to tend bar. I’m not stupid, guys. I’m not as young as I look.”

I was just starting to relax, when he took off his ball cap.

Flaming red hair.

You make your living perfecting your craft, developing technique and approaching everything with a cold, critical eye. But you still need to trust your gut, and you don’t fuck with superstition. Everyone knows: red hair is bad juju.

We watched as Danny got in the car with his sister, who best I could tell was a redhead, too. Terrific. A family of goddamn redheads.

The red hair should’ve been a deal breaker. But my brother can be pretty damn convincing when he wants to be, and in the end, I guess I was too focused on the finish line.

*

“You’re bleeding badly,” the woman says. “You need a hospital.”

“Just drive,” I repeat, although I’m not sure that’s what comes out, the words sort of slithering, slurring. My brain feels like it’s bobbing on a bog of molasses, the rest of me being sucked down. I look over at her, try to focus. Her face is changing color, sharp shadows dancing like devils on a grave in the moonlight...

*

I was pissing out the backdoor of the motel into the brush, when they showed up. Growing up here in the northern wilds, I’ve always liking pissing outdoors. It’s...comforting. The medicine bag, where I’d transferred the stones, sat an arm’s length away on the bathroom sink. Danny sat on the bed, his head in his hands, his flaming red hair falling over his face.

Everything started out fine. We caught up with the diamond men around midnight, just past Riesling, at a desolate rest stop, a swoop and grab. Danny was as skilled a wheelman as Prince had said he would be, pinning them in their car while Ash and I hopped out and took care of the rest. The salesmen were about a hundred years old, and they gave up the trays, no problem, like we knew they would.

The old farts crawled into the trunk like little boys going down for an overdue nap.

As Ash and I started to get in the car, Danny got out.

“What are you doing?” I said. “Get back inside.”

“We can’t leave their car here,” Danny said.

“What are you talking about?”

“I just saw a truck up on the highway flip a bitch and make for this exit.”

“I didn’t see any truck,” I said. “Ash?”

“I wasn’t looking at the highway.”

“We don’t have time,” Danny said. “Trust me. We’ve got to move—now.” He handed me the keys. “You drive. I’ll get rid of the car, get a hold of you at the Candlelight.”

“Fuck that,” Ash said.

“You’re holding the diamonds,” Danny said. “What’s the problem?”

“That’s just not how we do it,” I said.

“I don’t know how you two do it,” Danny said, “but I’m telling you, I saw a truck up there get off this exit—”

“Who gives a shit?” Ash said. “Maybe they forgot some milk at the store—”

“What store? We’re in the middle of fucksake nowhere—”

I reached inside the salesman’s car, yanked the key from the ignition, a single one on a giant ring with a diamond-encrusted logo and the words “Let It Shine.” I passed the key to my brother. “I’ll go with Danny north to the Candlelight. You head south, leave the car at Lyman’s.” Lyman’s was the old junkyard off 73, about half an hour from Prince’s. It’s where we left a lot of things we didn’t want being found for a while. “Call Prince when you get there. Get a hold of us at the motel.”

We’d been at the Candlelight for over three hours. No Ash. Prince wasn’t picking up either. And out of nowhere, a brutal winter storm had rolled in.

A freak blizzard. A goddamn redhead. It’s not a matter of signs. You just know when the chips are stacked against you.

I heard the sirens coming up the drive just as I was zipping up, and grabbed the bag. “Let’s go!”

But that redheaded bastard just sat there, on the bed, looking at me like a lost puppy dog.

I wasn’t waiting. I pulled my gun and ran. I heard the door splinter, the shots. I looked back to catch the kid flopped facedown on the floor.

I ran through the brush and snow, and one good thing about the storm, if they were behind me, they sure as shit couldn’t see me.

I got to the ledge overlooking Old State Road 23, and grabbed a branch to navigate down the icy embankment. I felt a stinging beneath my ribs. I looked down and saw the blood. Then the branch broke and I rolled down the hill.

*

“You don’t look so good.”

I’ll be OK. Don’t worry about me, I say, holding up the gun, only I realize I’m not holding up the gun. It lies there, limp in my lap. And no words are coming out of my mouth, either. I’m paralyzed.

She reaches over and grabs the gun, peeling it effortlessly from my flaccid fingers. She pulls off to the side of the road, pets my head. I can’t move a muscle, can’t even blink.

A car approaches from the other direction, slows down, and stops in front of us, and as the light spreads, I see the peroxide box on the floor, the giant key ring with the diamond logo, shining, dangling in the ignition. I think I detect the faint scent of cinnamon...

She reaches over, grabs the bag at my feet.

She lifts the pack of cigarettes off my lap, fires two up, and sticks one in my mouth. She laughs when it falls right back out.

How...

“I know what you’re asking yourself,” she says. “Who was it? Danny? Your brother? Prince? Maybe all of them?” She lifts my head, squares it up out the windshield. “What did you really see?”

Through swishing wipers into the icy night, I see a silhouette in the headlights, a faceless black shadow cast back over me.

“And what I’m telling you,” she says in a whisper as she lets go of my head and it falls with a lifeless thud on the dash, “at this point, what does it matter?”

BIO: My work has appeared in Shotgun Honey, Flash Fiction Offensive, Darkest Before The Dawn, Thrillers, Chillers 'n' Killers, Thundadome, and a lot of the high-minded literary ones too (Connecticut Review, et al).

Interlude Stories: Court Merrigan

2011-11-16T08:11:00.000-06:00

VACUUM MAN - COURT MERRIGAN

Normally you can’t hardly bribe a Pattaya cop to a ten-car pileup but this one appears at our little fender-bender pronto. He grandstands around the crash scene with his spray paint, outlining skid marks and plastic debris from where the farang tourist sideswiped me and Jae on the scooter. Notes license plates and names in his little notebook. Sucks up to the barbarian in English with a shit-eating grin, like he just couldn’t be happier the red-skinned bastard has come to Thailand. Meanwhile he confiscates me and Jae’s IDs.

Me and Jae have been working this lane of short-time hotels and low-end girly bars for a while now. We got it down like the movies. It’s easy to spot the farangs in rentals and then we just have to take diggers. We practice our diggers on the beach. Tourists take pictures of us practicing down there, is how good we are.

Normally a farang will see the blood, the crashed scooter, the cracked helmets, and fork over a wad just pissing himself to get gone. Then me and Jae spend the next few weeks spending our good fortune sucking down beers and picking up waitress and masseuse rubes fresh off the upcountry bus.

“You give the boys money,” says the cop to the farang.

Jae nudges me.

“Hospital,” I say in English, displaying my bleeding arm. “Hospital.”

Jae keeps wicking the blood off his forehead and with the cop watching the barbarian hands us some sweaty bills. Guess we’re lucky to score any.

“Okay,” says the cop to the farang in English. “Everything okay.” He looks at us. “You two,” he says in Thai, “you follow me.”

*

At the police box we give the cop deep wais, palms pressed together, heads bowed. Proper as can be. The cop instructs a junior officer to lock us in the sweatbox.

“But we didn’t do anything,” says Jae. “He hit us.”

“Say one more word,” says the cop. “Go on. Say it. So I can knock your fucking teeth out.”

We squat in the dark and piss stench a long time. When the cop finally arrives he blinds us with the lights and kicks us in the balls. Then he starts in with the baton. We grovel and beg but the cop doesn’t stop till he’s done. The junior officer passes him a water bottle and he slurps on it while me and Jae lay there coughing and spitting out teeth.

“Hand it over,” the cop says.

No point in resisting. Between the two of us we’ve got a little more than 3500 baht. The cop deposits the bills in his breast pocket.

“And your scooter keys,” he says.

“What the fuck, man?” says Jae.

The cop brandishes the baton. Jae digs the keys out of a pocket.

“If I ever see you two rat fucks again,” says the cop, “I’ll cut off your balls. You ever pull this stunt again, I’ll cut off your balls and shoot your mothers. We’re clearing the street rats out of Pattaya. Tell your friends.”

He instructs the junior officer to direct us to the garbage heap out back. The junior officer flicks our ID cards onto the pile after us.

*

We pass the time pissing blood, guzzling rice whisky, cussing every pig in Pattaya. Then I get a call from my cousin Dul.

Dul is a condo complex security goon, one of those guys who leans back in a booth pretending to pay attention to who comes in and out. He says he has something for us. There’s this enormous fat farang who lives in the condo complex. Everyone calls him Vacuum Man. This is because he spends all day every day vacuuming up platefuls of food at every buffet in town.

“He weighs two hundred kilos if he weighs one,” says Dul. “He once cracked a counter in the lobby just leaning on it. He has to ride in the elevator alone. He can’t tie sneakers so he only wears sandals. The blubber off his chin hangs down to his chest.”

“I get it,” I say. “So?”

“So he’s easy pickings.”

“This going to work out better than last time?”

Dul used to manage a motorcycle rental shop for farangs. To rent a bike, farangs have to leave a passport as collateral. When one would rent a higher-end bike, one of them beautiful Beemers or a Suzuki crotch rocket, Dul would slip us a spare key. Me and Jae would tail the bike until the farang parked. Then I’d stroll over and lift the bike. When the farang turned up at the shop, Dul would threaten to hand his passport over to the police. A wad of bills would get coughed up real quick. A week or two later we’d haul the bike out of storage and come in for our cut. Easy. Until one day some hard-ass mob cats horned in on the action. They didn’t ask any questions before making us eat concrete.

“One shot,” says Dul. “In and out. Way better than playing scooter jockey.”

“Fuck you, Dul,” I say. “We’ll be over.”

*

We thread the gap in the back security fence and slip in the back door with a busted lock and hotfoot it to the 19th floor hallway where the security cameras are dead. Let ourselves in Vacuum Man’s door, courtesy a key from Dul.

What a letdown. This complex flaunts terraces and an indoor swimming pool and a lobby fountain and a sauna. Very class. But here Vacuum Man’s pad sits practically empty. No digital TV or leather couches or wardrobe or anything. One mattress in the bedroom. A few putrefying plastic sacks in the fridge. Rows and rows of pills and stomach tabs in the bathroom. Probably Vacuum Man is too busy being a hog to think of home furnishings. Me and Jae watched him waddle to ATMs and conjure up wads from his fanny pack scarfing his way across town. A whole week we’ve been watching him.

You can tell this is a farang building because it’s quiet as a cursed temple. No yapping, no TVs going, nobody hawking anything, no cooking or spice smells. No kind of place for civilized people, in other words. You don’t want to come back a farang in your next life, if you can help it. When the door rattles me and Jae pull on ski masks.

After the fat bastard bolts shut the door me and Jae gang tackle him. The pure size of him creeps me out. He must be four of me. Maybe five, and he’s slimy as a squid. Me and Jae gag him and try to pinion his arms behind his back but he’s way too wide for that. So we cinch his hands up good. He blubbers like a pissed-on dog but doesn’t fight. The cords vanish into the blubber. Jellyrolls bulge over his fanny pack. His wattle quakes. Me and Jae play rock-paper-scissors. I lose.

“Go on,” says Jae. “Reach in there.”

I kneel beside Vacuum Man and grope for the fanny pack, trying to keep my mind on the long days of lounging ahead. Unbuckle the greasy strap and yank the pack out, Vacuum Man yelping into the gag. I slap him, unzip the pack, flip it over. Out flutters a twenty-baht bill, a pile of coupons and vouchers, and one ATM card.

“Ask him for the PIN,” says Jae. “You’re the one who speaks English.”

I slap Vacuum Man again. Like hitting a side of pork hanging on a hook in the market. Take off the gag and let him gasp his breath back. Giant drops of sweat wobble off his mustache. I waggle the ATM card in front of his face.

“Hey you!” I say in English. “You number card! You say me! You say me now!”

Vacuum Man flaps his gums, making mushy sounds. I can’t understand a thing.

“Hey you!” I say. “You say number!”

“Listen close,” Jae says. “He’s trying to speak Thai.”

Fatty keeps on sputtering and finally I pick out the PIN: 9-8-7-6. Not very creative, Vacuum Man. Jae pockets the card and sprints out. I’m stuck with the fat son of a bitch. Fucking rock-paper-scissors.

“He finish, I go,” I say to Vacuum Man.

Vacuum Man starts jiggling his tied-up hands. “Please can take off?” he says.

“So you can speak Thai,” I say.

“Yes. A little.”

“Well, the answer is fuck no, Vacuum Man. You’d probably try to sit on me.”

I throw the gag back on and meander to the window. I’ve never been so high above town before. The lights of the five-star hotels and the shopping centers sparkle in sickles on the crescent bay, the blazing facades of the dinner-show boats coasting on the light. Tell you what, if this was my place I’d have a new girl in here every night. And none of these rubes still smelling like buffalo shit, either. Real class broads used to the finer things, who wouldn’t go gaping out the windows. I’d get me a stereo and a TV and a Burmese maid who’d scuttle around on her knees. I wouldn’t live like a barbarian like fatty here. But maybe that’s how farangs are. Who knows, what with all those twacked-out stories about their uncivilized ways you hear. Vacuum Man has quit with the blubbering. The building goes dead silent again. By the time Jae calls, it’s creeping me right the hell out.

“You ain’t going to believe this,” he says. “There’s nothing on this card. Not one baht.”

“What?” I say.

“Are you deaf? There ain’t nothing on this fucking card.”

“I should have gone. You’re probably not doing it right.”

“I’m doing it right. I’ve been to four machines. I’m telling you. There’s no money.”

“How in the hell can that be?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you ask him?”

I march over to Vacuum Man, kick a rubbery thigh, ungag him.

“Hey, you piece of shit,” I say in Thai. “Where’s your money?”

“No have money,” Vacuum Man says.

“Bullshit.”

“No have more money. Spend all.”

“Don’t lie to me. You put down twenty-three plates at the Marriott seafood buffet on Monday. I counted. And what about the Super Stuffer at the Hilton on Tuesday? The Noodle Extravaganza at Big Noi’s on Wednesday? Wang’s Thursday All-You-Can-Eat?”

“Not have anymore. Spend all.”

“The fuck you did,” I say.

I dig through the clammy fanny pack again. Nothing. Rip open dresser drawers, throw out buffalo-sized boxer shorts and T-shirts. Then I find a rope tied into a noose.

“What the hell?” I say, holding the noose out to Vacuum Man.

“No have money more,” he says. “Die today.”

I call Jae.

“You think it’s true?” asks Jae.

“There’s no money, is there?” I say.

“No. I been to two more machines, waiting for you.”

I stomp over to Vacuum Man. His meaty shoulders are quaking.

“A whole week we been following you,” I say. “You suck, Vacuum Man.”

“Everything sad,” he says. “Everything.”

I throw the noose on Vacuum Man’s lap. “Good luck.”

“Please,” he says. “Please untie my hands.”

I’m no barbarian. Before getting the hell out, I uncinch the cords.

BIO: Court Merrigan’s work can be found all over. For links, please visit http://courtmerrigan.wordpress.com/short-stories/.

Interlude

2011-11-11T16:36:00.000-06:00

NoHo Noir has a new home.

Check it out and tell them you-know-who sent you.

Interlude Stories: Nick Boldock

2011-11-08T08:57:00.000-06:00

EXPOSURE - NICK BOLDOCK

1.

I buried Gerald in the sand. Well, I say buried – really I just scooped as much of the stuff over his body as I could manage without too much exertion. Because by then, I knew that excess effort could leave me as dead as Gerald, and I had Chloe to think about.

Gerald had died in the night, while the three of us had slept fitfully in the middle of wherever the hell we were. I’d been awoken by Chloe shaking me, hands on my shoulders, whispering, “Dad... Dad... I think there’s something wrong with Uncle Gerald...”

He’d died in his sleep. I knew that burying him could kill me but I wasn’t about to leave him there to be food for the resident predators. I would at least try to give Gerald a proper burial. So I braced myself and hunkered down in the sand and scrabbled away with my bare hands until I had made a shallow depression. I wouldn’t have called it a grave as such – it was nowhere near deep enough to warrant that honour – but it would have to do. Using up even more precious energy, I dragged Gerald’s body into the crater and began to throw sand over him. I had nothing within me to keep me going but somehow my hands kept working and the sand kept piling up over Gerald, until eventually most of his body was covered by a dusting of the stuff. Not much maybe, but at least his face was no longer visible, which somehow seemed important. I clasped my hands together and prayed that this counted, that Gerald was laid to rest as best as could be under the circumstances. I recited the Lord’s Prayer – the only prayer I knew – under my breath.

2.

After the makeshift burial I hugged Chloe close to me. I told her that everything was going to be okay. We would be rescued soon – trust Dad, Dad knows best. But Dad didn’t know best, did he? Because if he did, then we would never have landed in this bloody mess in the first place.

Not for the last time I looked over at the burial mound that held Gerald. My brother. I heard him say to me, “Are you sure about this?” then heard myself answer, “What’s to worry about? Course I’m sure. It’ll be great.”

I wasn’t sure now. Not of that, at any rate. I was sure of one thing though. We were going to die, just like Gerald, and just like untold numbers of idiots over the years who thought that strolling across the Australian desert was like going for a walk on the Yorkshire Moors.

I’d planned a straightforward hike, no more than a couple of hours long, across a small stretch of outback. It was easy, in the grand scheme of things. Nothing to worry about – absolutely nothing. I’d done walks much longer than this before so this would be a piece of cake. So easy in fact, that when Chloe said she wanted to come, I’d agreed without hesitation. I should have known better than to be so blasé of course, but at the time – well, you know what you know, and sometimes that seems enough. So off we went into the desert, on our little leisurely jaunt. It would be fun.

Then the sandstorm came. From nowhere. One minute we were strolling along, laughing and joking, and then within a matter of seconds we were in the middle of a maelstrom. Hell came to visit us and it whipped at our faces and eyes, sucking the moisture from our lips, as we linked hands to help us stay together. Even like that we couldn’t see each other, such was the ferocity of the sand. I gripped Chloe’s hand so hard that I was worried I was hurting her. I was carrying a map and compass, both of which were ripped from my fingers by the storm. Our links to the real world were taken by the wind and left us with nothing.

By the time the storm and the flying sand abated, we had absolutely no idea where we were.

3.

We left Gerald. We had no choice. He was dead and we were alive, and we had to press on, to try and find help. Chloe wasn’t looking too good. Her lips were blue, even in the blistering heat of the day, and the skin on her face was visibly dry. Her eyelids were starting to crack.

When I looked at her it was all I could do not to descend into panic. My little girl was dangerously close to dehydration. She was going to die unless I could get us out of this. But I didn’t know where I was going and with every step things became more and more desperate. Fathers are supposed to be the superheroes in these situations. I knew that. I knew I was supposed to come up with some sort of master plan that would rescue Chloe and me, but I was stuck for inspiration, and as I looked over at Chloe again, she was struggling to even take a step forward.

The sand dragged at her ankles, as it did mine, and she stumbled to one side. She half-turned her head and looked at me out of the corner of her eye. “Dad...” she said. Then she fell forward onto the sand.

4.

I cradled Chloe in my arms. It was pointless but she knew I was there if nothing else. I imagined myself as a TV news crew, reporting on myself. I would say I had been reckless, foolish, irresponsible... I would say I had led my daughter to certain death in the desert through arrogance and over-confidence.

Her eyes were red with blood, haemorrhaging from her brain through dehydration. The skin on her face was developing welts like stretch marks. Her body was absorbing its own moisture. I had heard about this, but never seen it. I stuck the middle knuckle of my left hand between my teeth and bit down, hard. Chloe’s eyelids fluttered. She looked at me and said, “Dad... I love you.”

At that moment, I would have done anything for her. Absolutely anything. Tears pricked my own eyes and I told Chloe that I loved her too. I told her she was my baby. I told her she was special. I told her to close her eyes.

Then I raised the rock in my right hand, and brought it down on Chloe’s skull.

I did it again.

And again.

And then Chloe was dead.

5.

I couldn’t bear to see her die of thirst. I couldn’t let her suffer like that, and so I ended it for her before things went that far. It was her face that did it – seeing that beautiful silky skin cracking and bleeding brought it home to me. I looked at her and knew – my daughter was going to die. So rather than watch her suffer like a fly in a web, I did what I had to do and I stopped the pain.

She was my world.

6.

I think I hear helicopters. I’m lying in the sand, and I’m asleep, or I’m dead – one or the other. But there’s a dream, and there’s the noise of a helicopter. And it’s coming for me. Now, I hope it doesn’t find me. If it exists, let it leave me alone. And then, I can hug Chloe and tell her I’m sorry.

Interlude Stories: Mark Joseph Kiewlak

2011-10-31T17:41:00.001-05:00

JANUSLOWSKI - MARK JOSEPH KIEWLAK

Previously published in The Bitter Oleander in Autumn 2006

It’s those filtered cigarettes he smokes. I hate them. They’re so feminine. A real cop, a real detective, would smoke unfiltered.

He would chain-smoke, and never empty the ashtrays.

It’s the way he dresses, too. The sharp three-piece suits. The properly knotted ties. Where’s his trench coat? Where are the stains of the city? The blood, the vomit, the urine of dreams and hours pissed away?

College-educated, he wasn’t qualified for this. This girl needed heart. Someone with passion for the work.

I watched him kneel over her in the alley. She was facedown amidst the torn garbage bags. Egg shells and doughnut crumbs and steak trimmings were her final pillow.

She needed a hero. She got him instead.

There were dark alleys like this, hundreds of them in the city, with newspapers blowing trapped into brick corners, and the breath of a thousand winos waiting for the spark to set us all aflame.

Her blood ran between the cobblestones, but did he put his cheek down there to feel it? Could his nose smell and sort what it needed to? Did the currents make sense to him?

She was beautiful, blood-streaked hair and brain matter showing. He had no art, nothing to add to her image. Whereas I...I wanted to paint a smile on the back of her head, to reverse all the directions of her life. She seemed a prostitute, but who can tell these days? Would he, like a loving mother, look beneath her fingernails for evidence of her day?

He wasn’t soft enough for this job. He wasn’t tough enough, either. He had no extremes, no humanity with which to meet her halfway.

The downpour came eventually, and I cried to see him thrust his umbrella overhead. Blocked from the sky, from himself, unbaptized, sensationless.

There were witnesses. Elderly dead twig bones wrapped in skin no thicker than the glaze of the raindrops. Two sets of ancient orbs. Wisdom and knowledge his for the taking. He didn’t question them enough.

Her hair was cornsilk, matted. I see a single drop of blood tickle my palm, caress my wrist, plummet through long empty air to impact on her cheek. What does he know about me? What could he know?

She was a reporter, now I remember. A reporter/prostitute playing dress-up. She drank a little coffee with her caffeine. I loved the lipstick she left along the rim of her cup. I loved her.

Her every discarded piece of Styrofoam was another chalice for me to recover. I meant to tell her my feelings. But words were lazy, cumbersome, annoying to enlightened souls. The knife was a quicker message.

The moon was smiling with a bloody smear as its mouth. He was back in his immaculate office. He needed a flask of gin. He needed a three-day growth of beard.

There was a carpet, for God’s sake. Where was the hardwood floor, the peeling chips of paint, the soot-stained window nailed shut?

His desk blotter is lime-green, with not a coffee stain in sight. He uses paper clips, never a stapler. He’s got no soul.

He needs to put in a long night. To witness the ugly dawn through thin slats and weary eyes. He’s the best cop on the force. Such an unbearable burden.

Where is his release?

We sit and think about that, he and I. He in his place, me in mine. We share the absence of personal belongings. Companionship. I suppose we have each other.

I see the notepad pinned beneath her torso. The unwritten pages are turning back on themselves like the skin around a papercut. Her wrist is bent back on itself, still gripping the pen -- a junkie’s final needle. She was too perfect to ever let age.

He should start there, with her perfection. He should go to her house, study its wallpaper. He should hear what the baseboard heaters are whispering, read the reply in the windblown drapes. He should know something about that perfect moment of possession when she’s writhing in dream-fed ecstasy with the Egyptian cotton pulled tight between her legs. Has he ever seen the sights that are for him alone? Does he know the rising need that claws its own arm and chews the dead skin inside its own mouth?

There’s terror every time she turns away. What if she never turns back? Now she is facedown forever.

I know the brick pattern of the alley. I know how many, which ones are chipped. He walks that maze with a sledgehammer intellect.

She’s my Halloween girl. And I have to help him find who killed her. I have to teach him like a piss-his-pants rookie not to let reality impede his inner knowing.

She had spunk even when she brushed her teeth. She could threaten me with lifelong love. We couldn’t have that.

Now he’s filing his reports, for chrissakes. He’s mentally disturbed. Sick in the head, poor bastard. I’m not letting in any more structure to his perfectly diagrammed day. That won’t get the cuffs on anyone’s wrists.

He’s just sitting there straightening his pencil cup when he breaks. The whole squad is watching him bawl and sob and blubber about the girl, how could this happen, what world is this we live in. He’s sliding out of his straightback chair, knees to praying position. He’s soaking his underarms and his crotch. He’s alone now in a big bad dream and he's got to learn how to bite the throats out of his enemies.

Now we can get some detecting done.

Her eyes were looking everywhere and seeing colors fade, motions blur, speech made nonsense. Life lit up the exit sign and she was pushed through.

He goes back to the witnesses, their skeletons near-ready to burst through the yellowed plastic bags they called skin. They’re standing in a place, these two, where they can see the other side intersecting their every arthritic motion. What they’ve known is ending. Justice and the law. Man must govern himself.

He stands amid the passing crowd at the mouth of the alley-ending, my new hero-savior-killer-cop. He studies all day, all night. He looks for animals with masks as the city bus-faces pass indifferently by. He’s got the scent now, knows the type.

Her memories are written in blood on the inside of her skull. I can't see them smile. That’s why I needed to get inside. We’re all smiling in there.

He’s watching them now -- the players in his acted-out drama. He sees them knocking down walls, window-washing, studying make-up in compacts. He sees the leashes tighten in fists. He sees the glances a lifetime ignored. Ignorant people just walking past. Everything is in motion. It needs a rest.

He’s given up the poisoning blandness of his bottled water. He’s got a flask in his desk drawer. Every crime is unsolved. We can see only vaguely our own hearts. All else is mystery. He’s got a crime-stopper now that no one knows about. He sees a single drop of blood oozing from the barrel. But there’s an impatient ocean dammed up behind it.

He’s got the crime-stopper tucked in his pants just where it feels good. He’s taking it out now to show me, to tell me that Facedown would be the last.

He’s wiping tears of snot on the sleeve of his black and white world. Gray is in his eyes. His desk blotter is teardrops and vomit and coffee rings. He can’t pick up the phone without trembling. The bloody smears have voices. Chalk outlines are standing up and following him around. The walls sweat. And I notice that he's about to light an unfiltered cigarette.

He puts three bullets into my midsection and feels his chest grow heavy. His body cannot defy gravity. Clocks are striking midnight and husbands are striking wives.

Matches are striking thumbnails.

BIO: Mark Joseph Kiewlak has been a published author for more than two decades. In recent years his work has appeared in The Back Alley, Hardboiled, Plots With Guns, All Due Respect, Pulp Pusher, Thuglit, and many others. His story, “The Present,” was nominated for the 2010 Spinetingler Award: Best Short Story on the Web. He has also written for DC Comics.

Interlude Stories: Robert Caporale

2011-10-31T17:40:00.001-05:00

TEN DOLLAR STORY - ROBERT CAPORALE

The T-Bird Lounge is a social networking relic from another era.

If you can’t find a ten dollar story in a joint like The T-Bird, you better give it up.

You step in and sit at the sticky mahogany bar and order a Sam Adams. The bartender just stands there drumming his fingers on the bar and staring down at you. You order a draft and snag a couple pickled-eggs out of the jar on the bar. The caged Motorola above your head is silent, grainy and the picture flips. While the bartender draws your beer, you glance into the streaky mirror behind the bar sneaking peeks at the tortured faces of the denizens of midday beverage.

Before long, this tawdry bloated battle-ax of a woman with a blue ribbon in her hair spills her scary ass onto the stool next to yours and says, buy a girl a drink?

You could easily buy the pitiful old scullery maid a beer but instead you hear yourself say, Beat it, sister...you’re bothering me. Just then the door swings open and an intense blast of sunlight rolls into the dark murky cafe. Everyone squints and moans until the heavy wooden door slams shut and the last of the brazen sunlight recoils back outside leaving only a single laser beam of light shooting through the keyhole. Direct sunlight is the mortal enemy of all cold blooded lounge-lizards.

Give a girl a break, the scullery maid pleads.

You give her the once over.

I wasn’t always this pitiful, she says. There was a time you would have fell to your knees and begged to get into Betty’s pants.

Not my type, you say.

Betty was everybody’s type back then...even Father Flannigan.

You smirk, nod.

When my Rocco was alive, I had it all, Betty says. He got it for me: Colt .45, creamsicles, beer nuts, Skybars, chocolate éclairs...Rocco was the best....he worshiped me...I was the Queen of Atlantic Avenue...I miss Rocco.

What happen to your Rocco?

His monkey killed him.

Monkey!?

Rocco was the organ grinder down on the steel pier. He worked under the pink Ferris wheel for years. He was famous. The tourists loved Rocco and Gus.

Gus?

Gus was Rocco’s monkey; a mean little piss-ass of a dysfunctional monkey. Gus and Rocco had a drunken quarrel one night over the percentage of their take. Gus thought because he did all the work; dressing up like Captain America, dancing around and doing slapstick comedy that he should get a bigger cut than Rocco. According to Gus, all Rocco did was crank the damn handle. Gus thought that you didn’t need a special talent to crank a handle; any dimwit with an arm could crank a handle.

Rocco reminded Gus that monkeys can’t take out a vender’s license. That’s when Gus flipped-out and threw a bottle of Chianti right at Rocco’s head, killing him dead.

Maybe Rocco is not dead, you tell Betty, maybe he’s just hiding.

I watched Rocco thrash around on the kitchen floor in a puddle of wine choking on his own blood. A piece of broken bottle lodged in his neck and severed his...you know...his larry...something X...his windpipe. The police accused me of breaking the bottle on the Formica table and sticking it into Rocco’s neck during a violent domestic dispute. I told them that Rocco was my golden goose; why would I kill my golden goose? I told them Gus the monkey did it. They did not believe me. They asked me where was Gus? I told them he jumped out the window. The cops chuckled and told me they’ll put out an all-points-bulletin to pick-up the armed and dangerous steel pier monkey. You guys are a real funny, I told them. A damn riot. The cops talked to my neighbors; they heard screaming and arguing coming out of the apartment. I tried to explain to the cops that was Gus’s high pitch squeal. The cops believed me even less.

You’re sure it was Gus who murdered Rocco?

It had to be Gus. Rocco didn’t cut his own throat. Plus that little devil monkey turned and smiled this creepy green-toothed smile at me just before he jumped out the window onto the fire escape. That monkey set me up. That monkey ruined my life. I was innocent of all charges and still got 15 to 20; I did eighteen years in Rahway Prison for women and believe me it’s not like in the movies. It’s no lesbian picnic. It was a nightmare. I was in my prime when I got locked up...now look at me.

What happen to Gus? you ask.

Parts unknown...but if I ever get my hands on that little bastard of a monkey...

You finish your beer, wipe your mouth on your sleeve. Good story, Betty, you say. I’ll give you five bucks for it.

Ten...along with a shot and a beer.

I own all rights?

Deal, Betty says.

You motion to the bartender, a shot and a beer, you say, for the reigning Queen of Atlantic Avenue.

Interlude Stories: James C. Clar

2011-10-31T17:40:00.000-05:00

ANCIENT CHINESE SECRET - JAMES C. CLAR

“So, Mr. Li,” HPD Detective Jake Higa asked the immaculately dressed restaurant owner. “You don’t deny that the missing men worked here for you?”

Cars turned off Kaimuki onto Kapahulu Avenue. Houses and high-rises competed for space on the lush, towering hillside in the distance to the north toward St. Louis Heights and the campus of the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Across the street, a small group of locals played basketball at Crane Park. Their efforts were seen rather than heard through the thick glass of the restaurant’s tinted windows. The game seemed like some sort of liquid pantomime in the mid-morning sun.

“Deny it, Detective? Why would I deny it? In fact, I’m quite proud.” Li spoke perfect English, acquired first at a British school in Hong Kong and, later, honed by years of dealing with a fickle public in San Francisco and, finally, Honolulu. “I’ve come up with a remarkably efficient solution to one of the island’s most vexing problems.”

“Yeah,” Higa’s partner, Ray Kanahele observed sardonically, “it’s obvious you’re a real philanthropist.”

Higa raised his eyebrows in a cautionary way and glanced meaningfully at the lumbering Hawaiian. Kanahele was nobody’s fool, and he was a good man in a tight spot. At times, however, he had trouble restraining his tongue. With Halloween only a few days away, the big man was particularly on edge. Holidays always had that effect on him.

As far as Kanahele was concerned, the Waikiki area was madhouse enough what with the tourists, the eccentric residents who had washed ashore from God knew where and for God knew what reason and the commercial juggernaut that roared basically twenty-four hours a day. Mix in a holiday like Halloween and reality soon became even more twisted. Waikiki could overload anyone’s circuits under normal circumstances. Now there were whack-jobs running around in costumes and all the stores in the area were tricked out with ghosts, ghouls, goblins, witches and jack-o’-lanterns in every goddamn window. All in all, Kanahele would argue if given the opportunity, it made a tough job even tougher.

“You could say that,” Li continued unperturbed. “In any case, once word gets out – and I’m certain it will – others will adopt my strategy, here as well as on the Mainland. The idea’s guaranteed to take off in less developed countries as well; in places where scruples often take a back seat to economic necessity.”

Higa spoke before Kanahele could interrupt.

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“Right,” Kanahele chimed in undeterred, “enlighten us about your ‘ancient Chinese secret’.”

Li turned and barked out instructions in what Higa assumed was Taiwanese to a harried employee shucking pea-pods at a table in the far corner of the dining room.

“The homeless have proliferated here in Oahu in alarming numbers over the last decade. Of all people, you and Detective Kanahele must realize that vagrancy has become a life-style choice of late. There was one man whose, um, acquaintance I made who divided his time between Hawaii and Southern California! Nothing the City or County has tried to do has worked.”

Despite himself, Ray Kanahele almost found himself agreeing with Li’s assessment. The number of “Hoovervilles” that had sprung up on the island was a genuine embarrassment, not to mention the subject of much consternation on the part of officials concerned with the Aloha State’s image as a tropical paradise and primetime vacation destination. The sixteen mile stretch on the leeward coast between Manakuli and Keauu, for example, had become little more than a sprawling shantytown. And, of course, there were ongoing issues with vagrants camped out in Kapiolani Park and Kuhio Beach in the heart of Waikiki. But now three homeless men had gone missing under somewhat mysterious circumstances; circumstances that seemed to be connected with their “employment” by Li in his fashionable new restaurant.

Higa, for his part, looked into Li’s eyes. As a Japanese-American proud of his Asian background, he had hoped to see something in the businessman with which he might be able to connect. What he saw, however, disappointed and disturbed him. Li’s eyes were lifeless, calculating. If Higa saw anything there, it was avarice and an utter lack of humanity.

“Unfortunately, Mr. Li, I’m still a bit confused,” the wiry policeman stated. “You admit that you offered the three missing men jobs. We have a statement from another of your employees to the effect that he transported them, on separate occasions, here to the restaurant in one of your vehicles. Now, though, you’re referring to some ‘solution’ you’ve come up with for the island’s homeless problem. I’m not sure I see the connection.”

From where he stood just off to the side of the owner, Ray Kanahele looked around at the ornate furnishings in the dining room. Right in the middle was a full-sized koi pond complete with a colored lights and a waterfall. Each of the tables in the establishment was topped with a “harvest” centerpiece featuring a mini-pumpkin. He leaned in close and lightly squeezed the well-dressed man’s shoulder.

“See,” Kanahele spoke quietly, “what my partner means is, we’d like to know what ‘jobs’ these guys were supposed to be doing for you and, you know, where we might be able to locate them. All three of ‘em were pretty well known in the area; no one’s spotted them in the last two weeks or so.”

“Detective Kanahele, please,” Li grimaced under the pressure of the beefy detective’s grip. Kanahele released the man’s shoulder and backed up. “Times are hard, detectives. The pressures of running a successful business – let alone a restaurant – in this economy are enormous. We did quite well when we first opened. You might recall that I was profiled in Honolulu Magazine. But, of late, the pace has slowed somewhat. Prices, however, continue to rise, especially for meat and fish. Raising my own prices is out of the question. That’s the worst thing you can do when trade starts to fall off. Plus, the holidays are upon us. It should be our busiest season. I studied the problem and devised an elegant and cost-effective answer.”

Higa looked up from his battered, black Moleskine notebook. Almost at once, he understood. Looking at his partner, it was clear that the big man was still in the dark.

Li’s eyes met Higa’s. The owner then turned toward Kanahele. He spoke to the Hawaiian detective as though to an uncomprehending employee.

“Surely, detective, I don’t have to remind you of the practices of your ancestors!”

Higa closed his notebook and stood up.

“I think we have everything we need here, for now, Mr. Li. I’m going to have one of our patrolmen escort you out to his car. Be aware, please, that anything more you say may be used against you. If I were you, I’d get in touch with an attorney.”

*

“You know, Jake,” Kanahele spoke two hours later as he looked quizzically at his untouched teriyaki steak plate lunch. The two men sat at an outside table on the Kanaina Avenue side of the Rainbow Drive-In a few blocks down Kapahulu from Li’s restaurant. The venerable take-out place once frequented by a young Barack Obama was jammed with the usual assortment of tourists, construction workers, delivery drivers and surfers.

“Bastard’s got balls mentioning the ancient Polynesians like that. They did what they did in special ceremonies and as a way to capture the strength of their enemies. They weren’t trying to save a buck by luring in unsuspecting victims and serving them up in their friggin’ Kung Pau Chicken or Mu Shu Pork!”

“Aren’t you going to eat that?” Higa asked pointing to the quickly congealing mass of meat and rice on Kanahele’s plate.

The big detective stood up from the table and tossed his meal into a nearby trash can.

“I’ve lost my appetite. Besides, we might as well go and get started on all the paperwork. I need to get home at a decent hour tonight. Maile accepted an invitation to a Halloween party from one of her coworkers. We’re supposed to dress up in costumes, for Christ’s sake.”

“What are you going as?” Higa asked, still seated.

“Yeah, well,” Kanahele hesitated. “I was going as a Fijian warrior. Now I think I’m gonna’ come up with a different idea.”

Higa stood. A wry smile played across his usually impassive face despite the fact that he still had to acquire a few items to complete the costume requested by Toshio, his girlfriend’s gifted but troubled son. The eleven-year-old was planning on trick-or-treating this year in an authentic Yomiuri Giants’ uniform.

“Ray, didn’t you and Maile eat at Li’s place just last week?”

“Shit,” Kanahele replied looking a little pale, “I think I’m gonna’ become a goddamn vegan, too!”

BIO: James C. Clar has published numerous stories in print as well as on the Internet. His work has appeared in venues as diverse as 365 Tomorrows, Apollo’s Lyre, Flashshot, The Taj Mahal Review, The New Flesh Magazine, Weirdyear, Shine: A Journal of Flash, Long Story Short and Everyday Fiction. Earlier stories featuring Honolulu detectives Higa and Kanahele may be found right here on A Twist Of Noir, as well as on Thrillers, Killers ’N’ Chillers and Powder Burn Flash.

Interlude Stories: Paul Beckman

2011-10-24T15:52:00.000-05:00

DATE NIGHT - PAUL BECKMAN

Jack showed up at Tina’s door Thursday evening. His regular day was Tuesday, which he missed and Thursdays belonged to Big Gino, who was sitting on the screened porch in his shorts smoking a Cuban and drinking a Mohito. Tina always had a batch of Mohitos ready on Thursdays.

She told Jack that he couldn’t come into the house and to please go away. Jack pushed Tina aside and walked in trailing behind his whiskey breath. He looked around and found Big Gino calmly sipping his drink through a curvy straw.

“Haul ass,” Jack said in his don’t-mess-with-me voice.

Big Gino puffed on the stogy and ignored him. Jack walked over to Big Gino, bent over and got into his space, glaring with an eight-point scowl and graveled, “Move it!”

Big Gino stood and grabbed his shirt and put it on.

“Hurry up,” Jack ranted as Big Gino reached under his jeans and pulled a .38 and shot Jack in the gut. He added another shot to his forehead, picked up his glass and sipped the rest of his Mohito.

He spoke for the first time. “Sorry you had to see that, baby,” he said to Tina.

“It’s alright,” she said breathing hard and turned on like all get out.

“No. It’s not,” said Big Gino and did her the same way.

BIO: Paul Beckman is a real estate salesman & writer of short fiction. Sometimes his fiction inadvertently shows up in his real estate ads.

Some credits: CONNECTICUT REVIEW, ONTHEBUS, PLAYBOY, 5 TROPE, SOUNDZINE, SCRUFFY DOG REVIEW, LITRO, FICTION WAREHOUSE, WEB DEL SOL, LONG STORY SHORT, PITTSBURGH FLASH FICTION GAZETTE, RIVERBABBLE, EXQUISITE CORPSE, OPIUM, CONNOTATION PRESS and POSTCARD SHORTS.

Collections: Come! Meet My Family & other stories, Web del Sol Chap book, Maybe I Ought To Sit Quietly In A Dark Room For A While (flash & micro fiction chap book), Silken Worm Chapbook.

Novella: Lovers and Other Mean People (Sugar Mule)

Web: www.paulbeckmanstories.com

Interlude Stories: Mark Joseph Kiewlak

2011-10-24T15:51:00.000-05:00

LANCELOT - MARK JOSEPH KIEWLAK

“Is your name really Lancelot?” she said. “’Cause, like, nobody’s name is Lancelot.”

She was nineteen. Maybe. We were in the stairwell, moving down. There were ten guys with guns waiting in the basement.

“Did your mother give you that name?” she said. “Was she, like, into the Knights of the Round Table and King Arthur and stuff?”

“Shut up,” I said.

I thought about reversing direction. There were ten guys with guns waiting in the penthouse.

“You shouldn’t have come here,” she said. “I would’ve done fine on my own.”

We were nearing the basement. “I know why you’re here,” I said. “I know a lot of it. I know about Maurice.”

Maurice had a lot of girls. And a lot of bodyguards. But there was only one Angela. And only one of me, for that matter.

“That social worker’s got a big mouth,” Angela said.

Her hair was auburn and hung down to her ass in a long braid. She was wearing jeans big enough for me and black leather shoes with chunky four inch heels.

“Tell me what he did to you,” I said. “And we can make him pay.”

“Who?” she said. “Maurice -- or my father?”

Jesus Christ.

“Is that some sort of surprise?” she said. “Isn’t that what you expect?”

“The day I start expecting it,” I said, “I’ll put the gun to my own head.”

We had reached the basement door. I peeked out through the wire glass. Two men stood guard on the other side. A half dozen more were by the elevator. I heard voices on the stairs. They were coming down.

“Let them have me,” she said. “There’s no other way out.”

I ducked under the stairwell just as the men rounded the last corner. Angela put her finger to her lips to indicate that she wouldn’t tell on me. The men took her by the arms through the door into the parking garage. As the door began to close behind them I heard one of them on a cell phone. “We’re bringing her up,” he said. He gestured toward the door to the stairwell and the two men who had been guarding the door stepped inside and I shot them both in the head at point blank range. I reloaded and ran out into the garage. Everyone including Angela was grouped by the elevators. I began firing as I ran toward them. I hit one in the midsection, another in the thigh. I hit one in the neck and another in the chest. By that time they were returning fire. I ducked behind a concrete pillar. Four of them were down. That left four plus Angela. I stuck my gun out and blasted another one in the head. I was about thirty feet away. Angela was screaming and kicking and only one guy was holding her. I reloaded. As a second guy turned to get a hold of her I shot him in the back. A bullet whacked a chunk of concrete out of the pillar where my head had been a second before. There were only two men left.

Angela broke free of one man’s grip and charged at the second. The man she had broken free of pointed his gun at her and I shot him in the upper chest. While Angela was wrestling with the last bodyguard I ran up and pressed my gun to his head. Angela took his gun and stuffed it in her pants pocket. The elevator was waiting with the doors open. I hauled the last bodyguard to his feet and shoved him inside. I grabbed Angela by the arm and did the same. I glanced around to make sure no one was making a recovery. Some of the men were still moving but not very much.

The doors closed and I pressed my gun up under the bodyguard’s nose. He wore a black T-shirt with black chinos. His arm was bleeding where Angela had bitten him.

“Fucking Lancelot,” she said. “You fucked us good now.”

I jammed the barrel into his nostril. “Take us to Maurice,” I said. He took out a key and inserted it into the control panel and pressed a red button at the top.

“When we get there,” I said, “you go first. Understand?”

He nodded. There was sweat on his lip and atop his shaved head.

“Maurice will kill us both now,” Angela said.

“What are you to him?” I said. “What was worth all this trouble?”

She took a step back into the corner and turned away from me. “Our daughter,” she said. “Maurice wants me to tell him where our daughter is.”

“Where is she?” I said.

The doors opened and I shoved the bodyguard out. We were in the foyer of the penthouse. More bodyguards were waiting. Some of them had Uzis. I took Angela by the throat. “This is the only way,” I said. “Otherwise I’m dead and I can’t help you.”

“Okay,” she said.

I got behind her and stuck my gun in her ribs. The bodyguards let us pass. The living room was triple-tiered and enormous. Off to one side was a hallway and a set of bodyguards on either side of a door. I marched Angela up to the door. “Let us inside,” I said.

From inside a gravelly voice said, “Let them in.”

We went in and found Maurice seated in the shadows behind an enormous desk. The wall behind him was all glass. The rain was slanting against it and pounding pretty hard.

“Where’s my daughter?” Maurice said. He acted as if I wasn't even there. His salt and pepper hair was receding in a widow's peak and grew long in the back. He had tiny round glasses with colored shades. His clothes were all black.

“You used to mean something to me,” Maurice said. “Now I will shoot you in the cunt unless you tell me where my daughter is.”

His gravelly voice had an edge to it that made my muscles tense up. He still hadn’t made eye contact with me.

“Like, fuck you, Maurice,” Angela said. “Why should I tell you anything? You’re just another macho prick who thought he owned me.”

Her use of the past tense was encouraging.

Maurice lifted his hand above the desk. There was a gun in it. He pressed a button on the arm of his chair and it moved backward. I realized it was a wheelchair. Maurice was a paraplegic.

“I have a right to my daughter,” he said. “She’s all I have left.”

“Then you don’t have anything,” Angela said.

Maurice shot her in the calf. Her body went slack and I took my hand from her throat and let her sink to the floor. I turned my gun on Maurice.

“I would piss in your face,” he said to Angela, “if I could.”

I was down on one knee with her head cradled in my lap and my gun arm out straight. Maurice pressed a button and his chair moved closer. “One night,” he said. “Twenty fucking years ago. One night.”

Something didn’t make sense. Then it did.

“You’re not Angela,” I said.

Maurice looked at me for the first time. He glanced at the girl he had shot. She said nothing.

“She’s a teenager, Maurice,” I said. “Look at her. She’s a fucking teenager.”

Maurice turned the gun on me. “And you’re a fucking dead man,” he said.

“She was my mother,” the girl said. “After she died I took her name. I took her memories. I took her everything. And you took mine.”

Maurice was in shock. He forgot all about the gun in his hand. “You ... you’re --”

“I’m your fucking daughter,” Angela said.

If he could’ve gotten out of the chair he would have. He motored to within a few feet of us. He reached out his hand to her. “My daughter,” he said. Tears were in his eyes.

Angela’s face was a snarl of contempt. If she felt the bullet in her leg she gave no sign. “You didn’t even know her,” she said. “You just wanted her and you took her. You gave her the virus. You never even knew she died. All you knew was that she was pregnant. You came to collect and I wasn't there. She hid me away from you. But I’m not hiding anymore.”

Maurice ignored the contempt in her voice. “My baby girl,” he said. “I found you at last.”

I stood up and took the gun from his hand. Through the window I saw the parking lot filling with police cars. Shooting ten people had gotten someone’s attention. As I turned back around I saw that Angela had taken the gun from her pants and was pointing it at Maurice. She fired it into his chest until it was empty. Then she fell backwards unconscious on the floor. Maurice’s body was slumped in the chair. His eyes were wide. There was a smile on his face.

BIO: Mark Joseph Kiewlak has been a published author for more than two decades. In recent years his work has appeared in The Back Alley, Hardboiled, Plots With Guns, All Due Respect, Pulp Pusher, Thuglit, and many others. His story, “The Present,” was nominated for the 2010 Spinetingler Award: Best Short Story on the Web. He has also written for DC Comics.

Interlude: Curse Of The Phantom Shadow

2011-10-17T10:33:00.000-05:00

Mark Ross is an independent filmmaker and is currently in production of a short film titled CURSE OF THE PHANTOM SHADOW.

The film is an homage to radio dramas, The Phantom, B Movies, Dick Tracy, Batman, Spy Smasher, The Shadow, Republic Movie Serials, Comic Books and Pulp Novels/Magazines of the 1930s/1940s.

The film takes place in 1948 and stars a number of actors that have been in Hollywood productions.

Until recently, the film was 100% financed, via Mark’s personal savings but has since had to ask for donations to keep the production afloat.

All Mark is asking for you to do is check out his site and have a look at the video there. If you wish to make a donation, there is a portion of the site where you can do so.

Interlude Stories: Jamie Grefe

2011-10-17T10:30:00.000-05:00

SHE’S EVIL - JAMIE GREFE

No more flings. It’s over. I loosen my tie and suck a Lucky through dust-filled lungs; lean in and breathe smoke over her body like a sacramental offering. Mutter a few words and watch her eyes study the ceiling in a limp stare, blood seeping from sliced-up skin. I curse the torn walls of this place, the hideaway, and scream a bit. I pocket the blood-stained scissors.

Sitting by the body, I crumple and swallow the note, let the ink drip down my throat, chasing it with spit. Kathleen, my lovely bird, look at you. My hands shake from this hot summer night. I pry the suitcase from her right hand. Ella will be proud of me.

The cigarette sticks to my lips. Visions of Ella and Kathleen send me shivering to the floor in a guilty lust. I hug the case and watch their two perfect faces blur, congeal, and melt into each other. The images morph from Kathleen’s sultry gaze to Ella's sweet smile. The scissors weigh my pocket down like a rock in a dead man’s mouth. But something is amiss and I know it is amiss, can feel it in the acidic ink. Kathleen’s left palm lies open. I read the message inscribed in blood, “She’s evil.”

Headlights from the driveway hit the wall behind me. Duck and stumble through the living room, fumble to the kitchen. My vision blots in bits of red. I hear the voices of men, men that are looking for me, looking for her. Car doors slam. They can probably smell me in the musky air. They sniff. I crouch and glimpse their large bodies, black suits and ties, firepower. Guns click and crack. Of course, I think, Kathleen’s hired hands. I have seen them in her office. She must have told them. I know this will not end pretty. Staring, I think of Ella waiting alone in the cabin. We are a mile apart from the first day of our new life.

When the front door is blown apart, I hear them holler and I disappear into the woods through the back door. I clutch the suitcase tight. A death-visit. Bullet serenades drill tiny holes into the house churning the wooden innards into a pierced lung. She had sent them to do me in. I did her in instead. It all works out in the end, I think. I run in strangled breath through the thick night. From a small hill hidden by tall trees I watch the fireworks, imagine her body engulfed by all those men, spoiled skin, holes, scissor slices. Kathleen, you set me up, I think. Waves of ‘she never really trusted me’ shoot me in the face. I’ll get over it. There’s too much money in the suitcase.

A muffled cellphone rings. There is a phone tucked in the inside pocket of my suitcoat. It is her phone. Lies. That would explain the lack of tears. Private Number. Connect and listen. Close breathing, empty shells skitter and clink through the speaker. A low drawl whispers in a foreign tongue. I hang up. The woods are still with the smell of death. I stomp the phone to bits even though I know it’ll do no good. They know where I am. They know I’m alive. I empty my pockets and review: map, keys and case.

I unfold and spread the map over the dirt and grass, use a match for fire to trace a way to where Ella waits. Her red-lipped kiss print marks the spot, one tiny star in the center of the lip-mark: our cabin. Yes, Ella will be there. I can still taste Kathleen’s dew on my fingers, in my nostrils. A soft moan like music echoes through the trees. A figure steps from behind a gaunt tree and leans her slender frame up against it. It is Kathleen and I freeze. Her red dress drips blood from the gash in her chest. There is a haze of smoke around her. I rub my eyes, but she is still standing there. A faint light emanates from her chest. The wound pulsates. I clench my teeth, stand and step slowly to her.

She wipes the blood from my face, while her green eyes chew kisses on my cheek. I can’t feel anything. I extend my arms to her. She is gone. I slap my own face. Nothing but the wind, I think. A bubbling pulse shoots through my skin in simmering ripples of pain. It feels like something is pushing out from my insides, something other than me, a part of Kathleen or a lingering trace of desire.

A wind picks up and I hold the map down with two stones. Light another match. Light another Lucky. I find the cabin on the map. It is a crude square amidst squiggles and trace my finger from the house to the wooden fence just over the hill that will lead me to the cabin with the kiss-marked lips. The phone rings again, a slur of voices are carried in by the tides of night and I think of the smell of her dress. Footsteps rustle in the distance. Too many ghosts out tonight, I think.

I fold the map and cram it into the suitcase, latch the case and run. There must be thousands in there all staring at me. Branches flick my face. For every wound, I think of Ella, I think of Kathleen. I hallucinate their bodies piercing the black woods around me. Kathleen runs through the field. She spreads herself in the grass. Solitary, Ella points to the fence, vanishes in the dark. Wild dogs with female voices sing from the horizon and I feel I blur into the blackened hallucinations of the night until I find the wooden fence that leads to the cabin. Thank you, ladies.

When I enter the cabin, fingers clutch my throat, maul my eyes and nose. The hands reek of gasoline. Someone is prodding my mouth with the muzzle of a cold gun, damp disinfected cloth, duct tape. Tied to the chair and through the puffed eyes of bruises, I think I see her in front of me - Ella, my glamorous angel and wife. Rough men surround me. Their faces are blurred phantoms in the low-light of the lamps and in the glaze of these fresh wounds. The head of a dead deer hangs above the fireplace. I shot, stuffed and mounted it two years ago. Now, it stares in revenge. The chair I am tied to is made of wood, bolted to the floor with nails. Ella, my angel wife, grins and pulls a Lucky from my shirt pocket.

The case is now handcuffed to a rough man’s thick wrist. Ella is talking with him, but I can’t understand what they are talking about. Other men pour gasoline over my head and body, douse the floor around the chair. The ceremony, I mumble through broken teeth, will begin shortly. The words just kinda pour out. Headlights flash white against the wall behind me for a second time this evening. Doors shut and I flinch, seal my eyes, blank out the world. Everything sounds too close.

Ella moves close and sits on my lap, wrapping her long scented legs around me. A touch of death from the poisoned ink wells up from within and I choke it back down. Innards constrict. She pecks my dirty skin with soft lips and I cough up wads of black saliva and blood. She whispers a litany of gorgeous sentiments and final words like revelations or bullets. The gears of my brain are growing rusty.

She says I never should have cheated in the first place and that this is where cheaters end up. She says that cheaters and liars don't gel, don’t mix. She says that Kathleen should have seen it coming, but the only thing Kathleen could say was how lovely it was that I could be a shared man. And then, the money. Ella and I had it all worked out, I think. She had placed the scissors in the hideaway’s kitchen cupboard. That part was a cinch. It was this part that throws me for a loop. There is another man, she says. A man with a scar the size of Texas steps from the shadows. He looks broken, but I think it is me who is broken. We have made plans, she says. Plans, I say. Plans, the Texan scar says.

Spatters of red, orange and green swirl around the periphery while spiraling images of what could have been sizzle in my mouth and I sigh out word after meaningless word. Ella’s face sits in the center of those spatters; the facade of my angel melts into a tangled, messy clump of deception.

She stands and Texas passes her a pair of blood-stained scissors, the pair they must have pulled from my pocket. I grunt and listen to the scissors snipping. I hear a car engine start up outside and the men are moving from the inside of the cabin to the outside. I see them through the picture window with its curtains of red. A trunk closes. A horn honks. I taste blue jazz and smoky blood, suck the dripping blood back up into my nose and deep into gasoline-soaked lungs.

Ella kneels before me. It happens slower than I would have liked, but then again, I don’t like any of this. A kind of dull pain compliments the whole process. My screams dissolve into the mist wafting from the river of blood that gushes from the sliced skin and bone of my gnarled legs.

I faint and awake to the silence and emptiness of the silent cabin and the mocking deer head fading in and out of clarity. I shot that thing, I think. By this time, the forgotten words of the poisoned note, that final and absolute adieu, have eaten through my insides and left me just another bloated and bloody veil on the face of the only woman that I ever truly loved. The blood surrounds me, a river of red like love. Ella, from the door, walks atop the red water like I always knew she could. She lights a lovely match. The flame is radiant.

BIO: Jamie Grefe lives and works in Beijing, China where he writes and teaches. His work is up at Mud Luscious, Pure Francis, Wonderfort, Danse Macabre and elsewhere.

Interlude Stories: Andrew Stancek

2011-10-17T10:28:00.000-05:00

ON EMPTY - ANDREW STANCEK

Mister Johnson has me against the kitchen wall, one hand inside my brassiere, the other lifting my skirt. “C’mon, Janet, c’mon,” he grunts. His customers are waiting for the dinners getting cold on the plates. The ones I’m supposed to be carrying out. But he can’t stop himself. Another Thursday in Ellwood City. I finally slither from under him, grab the plates and sashay out. The Sheriff winks when I put down his chili.

The man in the back booth stares a hole through me. Looks like a tomcat done licking his bowl of cream.

“Anythin’ you serve in this here joint ain’t gonna make me puke?”

“Chili’s good,” I say. “Some meatloaf left.”

He looks me up and down. “You the purtiest thing I ever did see.”

“Yeah,” I say, “ever since last night? Meatloaf or chili?”

“’Taint apple pie I’d like for dessert.”

I’ve been listening to that kinda jazz since I turned eleven but at least he wasn’t Bubba or Duane or the other boys on the football team. Besides Mister Johnson I don’t have much else on the horizon. I bring the stranger his dinner, watch the regulars file out, wipe the counter while he eats. He’s a talker, been everywhere, he says. Picked in California, froze his arse shoveling coal in Michigan. By the time his dollar is on the counter, I know I’m not going to let him go. Banks, he says, is where his future is at. He robbed one already, and if I go along, we’ll be bigger than Bonnie and Clyde.

“You had a better offer?” he says and I almost leave my hat behind rushing out the door.

Turns out he’s no Clyde Barrow. And if I was more like Bonnie Parker I’d be dead. Maybe better off.

Fun, we had that, just no luck. Seems like every car we stole ran out of gas, every gun jammed, every store had no more than fifteen dollars in the till. Our ten days were the best damn ten days I’ve ever had. The end was out of gas in a stolen car, in Oklahoma, us running into sun glare in the fresh snow.

I cry before the judge, tell him I was just along for the ride, had nothing to do with the robberies. Mr. Johnson testifies I’m a good worker, must have lost my head. The Sheriff says he’ll keep an eye on me. The judge lets me off, and now Sheriff and Mr. Johnson both make me prove I’m grateful.

Seven months and thirteen days since they took Clarence away. I hope someone with better luck walks through that door soon. Ain’t holding my breath, though.

BIO: Some of Andrew Stancek's recent writing has appeared in THIS Literary Magazine, The Linnet's Wings, Pure Slush, Negative Suck, Istanbul Literary Review, Prime Number Magazine and Left Hand Waving.

Interlude Stories: Stephen D. Rogers

2011-10-17T10:26:00.000-05:00

NO U IN TEAM - STEPHEN D. ROGERS

So here’s the scoop. You, you’re going to wait outside. You park illegally and you keep the engine running. You want to be noticed.

That’s the key to this whole thing working. You’re the bait that’s going to lead the cops away from the money.

Maybe they cite you for speeding or driving to endanger or failing to stop, but they can’t tag you for the robbery since there’s nothing linking you to the job except for their assumptions.

If they do charge you, afterwards, you sue them for false arrest. You don’t even have to split whatever the court awards you since you’re the one who had to go through the booking process.

So you wait outside the bank. We come out the door and jump in your car. You take off and go around the corner where we jump out and get into the van. You take off again leading law enforcement on a merry chase.

When they stop you, you know nothing.

When they say witnesses saw the robbers get into your car, you break down and confess you were carjacked but that we threatened to come back and kill you if you ever talked.

You ask for police protection. Of course they’re not going to provide it, but throwing that curve will confuse them.

The reason you were parked outside the bank? You wanted to pull over to make a call. They can’t complain about that.

Once you’re free and clear, I’ll be in contact to give you your share.

And again, if you decide to sue the cops, you keep one hundred percent of whatever you get.

Sounds good, right?

BIO: Stephen D. Rogers is the co-author of A MISCELLANY OF MURDER and the author of SHOT TO DEATH, THREE-MINUTE MYSTERIES, and more than 700 shorter pieces. His website, http://www.stephendrogers.com/, includes a list of new and upcoming titles as well as other timely information.

Interlude Stories - Malcolm Holt

2011-10-07T18:49:00.000-05:00

DRUM AND WASTE - MALCOLM HOLT

Slinger stood by the edge of the murky waters of the River Tyne holding a pair of blood-soaked Zildjian drumsticks. As he stood there in total isolation, the evening light was starting to fade. It had been hard for him to stomach the events of the last few hours and he shuddered at the memories of a life gone by, one that he hoped he had escaped from forever. He had been wrong.

*

The previous evening, Slinger had enjoyed yet another good music session at the Cluny, one of the premier live music venues in Newcastle upon Tyne. It was always hot and sweaty in there but he loved it that way. His real name was Frankie Wilson, but as soon as he picked up his first set of drumsticks he became Slinger. This was no doubt due to him learning to play the drums in the manic style of the late Keith Moon, fast and furious.

As a frustrated teenager, he took all his frustrations out on his drum kit. Of course he looked nothing like Keith Moon. He was now over six feet tall, with a shaved head and a goatee. For Slinger, playing the drums in various local bands had ultimately been his salvation from a life of crime and drugs on a rough council estate in Newcastle’s East End.

After the gig, Slinger had returned to his flat in the Sandyford area of Newcastle, not too far from the Cluny, and he immediately opened a chilled bottle of beer. He had noticed his telephone flashing, telling him that he had at least one message. He picked it up and listened to the message. There was just the one. It was from an old friend, Pete.

‘Hi, Frankie, Pete here.’ As soon as he heard this, Slinger sensed that something was wrong. Pete never called him Frankie. The message continued. ‘I’ve emailed you a link to something I think you might want to see. Sorry, pal.’ The message ended.

Slinger was curious. Pete, or Pervy Pete as he was more commonly known, only ever sent links to outrageous porn films. He half expected the usual badly dubbed East European rubbish. He switched on his laptop and waited for it to load. After a few minutes, Slinger was opening his inbox and he soon found Pete’s email. He opened the link.

The film was up to Pete’s usual standards. Poor sound quality and grainy pictures. It was called ‘Tyne Teen Sluts 4.’ Slinger watched as a young teenage girl stripped completely with her back to the camera. An overweight man in his late fifties appeared, naked and clearly in some state of arousal. The man turned the girl towards him and Slinger instantly hit the pause button. As he watched a few more frames, Slinger threw his beer bottle at the wall.

Brought up on a drug-infested East End council estate in Newcastle, where feral children roamed and fists were a way of life, Slinger was only five years old when the riots were destroying many estates in England. After draggging himself through his teenage years, Slinger couldn’t wait to escape from his alcoholic father and his prostitute mother. He had always worried about his younger sister Suzy, though, but he always hoped that she would cope with the rigours of East End life better than him.

Slinger had recognised the man in the film. It was Thomas Whiteman, known as Uncle Tommy to all the local children. He was actually related for real to the Axeman, Ronnie Spencer, the most feared criminal in the area. Ronnie’s nickname was never about his choice of favourite weapon, it was rumoured to be about him having a humongous penis. With Ronnie, nobody ever challenged his right to the nickname.

Slinger stared at the frozen image on his laptop. He ran to the bathroom and threw up in the toilet. A few moments later, he returned to his living room, switched off his laptop and sat back in his armchair. He could feel the pulse in his neck throbbing. It was destined to be a long night without sleep.

*

The following morning, Slinger had found himself back in the East End standing outside the Ramraid, regarded by many as the worst pub in Newcastle. Its real name was the Rampart, but nobody called it that. You only ever entered the Ramraid if you could be certain that there was at least one friendly person you knew inside. Even the local police kept well away from the Ramraid.

Slinger knew the Axeman would be holding court inside, bragging about his latest drug business and his various second-hand goods ventures. He inhaled deeply, opened the door and walked inside. Only one table was occupied inside the Ramraid. Slinger saw that the Axeman was sitting there with two younger men. He had more tattoos than he recalled, but still looked evil. The Axeman looked up and glared at Slinger.

‘Well, well, the prodigal son returns. Had enough of posh living, eh, Slinger?’

Slinger tried hard not to show any fear. ‘I need your help,’ he said. ‘I need to see Uncle Tommy.’

The Axeman burst out laughing. ‘What’s the matter? Have you fallen on hard times and you need a film job?’

Slinger almost smiled as he shook his head. ‘Not quite, and if I had, I wouldn’t run to Uncle Tommy.’

‘Then what do you want him for?’ The Axeman was suddenly curious.

‘I need to see him about one of his films. There was someone I know in it.’

‘Oh aye, and who might that be?’

Slinger took a deep breath. ‘My sister.’

The Axeman was now really paying attention. ‘Oh I see. That is interesting. Your kid sister is under age, right?’ Slinger nodded. ‘So, why exactly do you want to see Uncle Tommy?’

‘I want him to leave my sister alone.’

‘So, I guess you’ve come to me because you don’t know where Uncle Tommy lives nowadays and you can’t really ask your sister, under the circumstances. But why do you think I would give you his address?’

Slinger hesitated for a second. ‘Because you owe me and if you had a sister, you would want to see him as well.’

When they were in their early teens, Slinger and the Axeman had been on the roof of a warehouse. The roof had been quite brittle and it gave way under the Axeman’s weight. Slinger had caught hold of his arm before he fell to what would have been an almost certain death.

The Axeman studied Slinger. ‘It must have taken a lot of guts to come back here and walk through that door. I suppose it was bound to happen one day that someone would want to have a word with the dirty old bastard.’ He picked up a beer mat and took a biro out of his pocket. The Axeman wrote down an address and handed the beer mat to Slinger.

Slinger took the beer mat and nodded. ‘Thanks.’

The Axeman put the biro back in his pocket. ‘Yeah, well, don’t make a habit of it.’

Slinger walked towards the door and was about to leave when the Axeman called out his name.

‘Slinger, there’s just one more thing. Uncle Tommy is usually sleeping off his lunchtime drinking session during the afternoon and he may be more receptive to your little chat. I also reckon we’re even now.’

As he opened the door, Slinger turned, nodded his appreciation and agreement, and then walked outside into the fresh air. He decided to return to his flat for a while, thankful that he had survived the encounter with no cuts, bruises or broken limbs.

It was some three hours later that Slinger located the rundown block of flats where Uncle Tommy lived. As he entered the communal door, Slinger was hit by the stench of stale urine. The lift was predictably out of order and the staircase was partially blocked by a battered Tesco shopping trolley.

He walked up to the second floor and knocked on the door to flat 23. No-one answered. He knocked again and still no-one answered. He tried the door and it opened. He walked into the hallway.

Slinger heard Uncle Tommy before he actually saw him. His snoring sounded strangely like a chainsaw. He was sprawled out on a stained old settee. Slinger walked over and kicked the left foot that was dangling over the edge of the settee. Uncle Tommy snorted loudly. Slinger kicked the foot again. This time, he got a response.

‘What the...who the fuck are you?’

‘I’m the ghost of your past.’

Uncle Tommy focused his eyes. ‘Do I know you?’

‘You’ve probably forgotten me by now, but I certainly know you.’

‘So, what the fuck do you want?’

‘I’ve been watching your latest film and I think it’s time for Uncle Tommy to retire.’

Uncle Tommy looked puzzled by what was happening. He studied the stranger more intently and he slowly began to recognise the man. The last time he had seen Slinger would’ve been a few years earlier.

‘You’re Frankie Wilson, aren’t you? I thought you’d moved on ages ago.’

‘I came back, just to see Uncle Tommy one last time.’

Uncle Tommy tried to sit up but soon gave up. ‘So, what do you really want?’

Slinger smiled. ‘Tyne Teen Sluts 4.’

Uncle Tommy shifted his position slightly, sensing that his visitor was not necessarily paying him a social call. ‘What about it? It’s not my best film, by any stretch of the imagination.’

‘Oh, it left nothing to the imagination,’ replied Slinger. ‘In fact, it was very clear what was happening. That young girl that you were shagging, in particular, she was well into it.’

‘Yes, she was. A genuine slut in the making, that one.’

‘She’s my sister,’ Slinger snarled.

The silence that followed seemed to last an eternity. Slinger stood over Uncle Tommy, who didn’t know what to do or say. He eventually tried to pull himself up into an upright position. Slinger was busy removing something from the back pocket of his jeans. When Uncle Harry saw a pair of drumsticks, he began to laugh nervously.

‘What are you going to do, play me a fucking tune?’

‘If you want me to. How about ‘I Can See For Miles’ by The Who?’

‘What?’

As Uncle Harry looked directly up at Slinger, the last thing he actually saw was the pair of drumsticks heading towards his eyes. He tried to scream but no sound would come out.

*

Slinger was still standing by the edge of the River Tyne. He knew that Uncle Tommy would never be watching any more cheap porn films. He doubted that what he had done would save his sister from ultimate self-destruction, but it was a start. He was satisfied that Uncle Tommy would never identify his attacker and he sensed that the Axeman would leave him alone. After all, they were now even.

As the light faded some more, Slinger looked at his drum sticks. Still covered with Uncle Tommy’s blood and god knows what else from his eyeballs, they had done their job well. Slinger had felt some distorted pleasure from having gouged out Uncle Tommy’s eyes.

Slinger knew that his old way of life was still lurking in the dark recesses of his mind, but he was determined to rise above the horror of it all once again. He almost ceremoniously threw the two drumsticks into the slowly flowing river below. He had plenty of spare sets at home in his flat. He doubted that they would ever be used for anything more sinister than beating out a good tune in future. As he turned to walk away, Slinger began to whistle ‘I Can See For Miles.’

BIO: Malcolm Holt is a 58 year old, early retired mental health worker, living in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. He has previously had two sport-related books published in England and has just drafted a television script for a proposed comedy drama series. He is also starting to write a travel book. 'Drum and Waste' is his first short story effort in the crime fiction genre, a genre he enjoys very much.

Interlude Stories - John Weagly

2011-10-07T18:37:00.000-05:00

LONG BLACK GLOVES - JOHN WEAGLY

She wore long black gloves, satin accessories that came up past her elbows, smooth and glossy to the touch. Refined. Exotic. Distinct.

I met her in the L & L Tavern on Clark Street, a dark, smoky place with Formica tables, wooden chairs, cheap drinks and a quiet but clear sense of despair. She was sitting at the bar.

I sat down on the stool next to her. She gave me a dry smile. “Buy me a drink?” she asked.

She seemed like she was already halfway there. “Of course,” I said.

We drank, Jameson for her and Johnnie Walker Black for me. Neil Young’s “Unknown Legend” played on the jukebox. After a couple of rounds, she asked, “Do you like my gloves?”

“Sure,” I said. “I love your gloves.”

“Fancy, aren’t they?”

“Elegant,” I said. “What’s the occasion? Are you going to the opera? Or a high society ball? Or a party at an embassy?”

“I just like wearing long, black gloves.”

“That’s fair,” I said.

“You like the way they rest on my skin? If we go somewhere, you can take them off. You can slide them down my arms, past my wrists, over my hands. Do it slow, like a ritual – methodical, leisurely, deliberate.”

“How much would something like that cost?” I asked.

“I’m not a hooker. I just feel like being with somebody.”

“Lonely?”

“Who isn’t?” she said.

I took her home. We fumbled around on each other. Her satin hands added an interesting element to our activities. After we finished, she told me a story about a boy and a waterfront and a mugging gone bad. The boy in the story liked long, black gloves. Then, in the night as I slept, she showed herself out.

The next evening I went back to L & L. My paramour was in the same spot at the bar, gloves and all. I sat next to her. “Did you spend it all?” I asked.

“Hi,” she said.

“Did you spend my twelve dollars?”

“I did,” she said. Her satin-tipped finger made small circles on the bar. “I did spend your twelve dollars. Cab fare.”

“My fortune.”

“Sorry. It’s all gone.”

“Thanks for leaving the wallet. And the credit cards.”

“What would I do with your credit cards?” She took her smooth, silky hand and placed it on top of mine on the bar. It felt like a cool breeze from far away. “Thanks,” she said.

“Buy you a drink?” I asked.

“Of course.”

Our drinks came. We sat in silence for a moment while we appreciated them.

“Did it help?” I asked. “Last night. Did it help any?”

“Not really,” she said. “Maybe a little, but not enough.” She sipped her whiskey. “Still think I’m fancy?” she asked.

“Elegant,” I told her.

At a table near the back, a woman laughed. “You didn’t make me an omelette,” she cackled. “You never made me an omelette.” Her laughter sounded like glass breaking.

BIO: John Weagly’s new short story collection, A BUCKET OF BOOBS, is now available on Kindle and other devices. Check out www.JohnWeagly.com for more information.

Interlude Stories - R. Thomas Brown

2011-10-07T18:29:00.000-05:00

UNDER THE INFLUENCE - R. THOMAS BROWN

“It’s fucking ridiculous is what it is.” Douglas sped down the freeway, the cruise control set at sixty-seven. “Look, I don’t even speed.”

“Calm down, honey.” Marie, his wife, flipped through a book on her phone.

“I will not fucking calm down. This is not fair.”

Marie set her phone in her lap. “Look, you got a ticket for talking on your phone. It’s against the law.”

“I know what the fucking law says.” He moved into the left lane to pass a white truck. His daughter in the car behind them did the same. “The point is I was not being unsafe. It’s a stupid law.”

“You’re setting a bad example for your daughter. You know, she texts all the time when she drives. They say it’s more dangerous than drinking.”

“Fuck that shit. Show me someone who can drop being drunk in their lap when they need to pay attention.” He pulled up even with the truck and looked over. “Look at this son of a bitch.” He pointed. “He’s fucking eating while he drives! From a bowl. A fucking bowl.”

“So?”

“So, there’s no law against that shit.”

Marie picked her phone up again and rolled her eyes. “They’d give him a ticket if he was driving dangerously.”

“Right, and that’s how it should be with my texting, too. I’m driving safe? Leave me the fuck alone.” He flipped his middle finger to the truck driver who balanced his bowl and returned the gesture.

“Doug, don’t do that. Driving angry doesn’t do anyone any good. Just relax.”

“I’ll relax when I fucking feel like it.” He passed the truck and took a deep breath. “Fucking nanny state assholes telling me what to do all the damned time.”

He glanced in his rear view mirror. “What the fuck? Now look at that douchebag.”

“What?” asked Marie.

“He’s swerving around like he’s fighting off bees or some shit. What a prick.”

“Is Stacy alright?” Marie turned around. “Doug, I’m worried.”

“See, see what I mean about real dangerous driving?”

“Not now, Doug. Stacy.”

“If he hurts her, I swear I’ll fucking kill him.”

“Just pull the fuck over, Doug.”

“What?”

“Pull over and let him get past us.”

“Fine.” Doug pulled to the shoulder and Stacy followed.

The white truck slowed next to them. The driver leaned out his window and spit on Doug’s Mercedes before driving away and laughing.

“That fucking asshat.” Doug sped off. “I just got this fucking car washed.”

Marie held onto the oh-shit handle. “Doug, what are you doing?”

“I’m gonna teach that little shit a lesson. The fucking police may be too busy giving out tickets for goddamned phone use, but this little fuckwad needs to learn.”

He was on his tail.

“Doug, back off.”

“Shut the fuck up. I’m trying to concentrate.”

The truck accelerated, but Doug had little trouble keeping up. “That’s right, run, fucker. Who’s the badass now?”

“Doug!”

He ignored Marie. “I’d bump you off the fucking road, if it wouldn’t hurt my paint job.”

“Doug, you’re scaring me.”

“Then go the fuck to sleep!”

“Doug!”

The truck made a sudden exit. Doug followed.

“What about Stacy?”

“What?”

“We’re taking our fucking daughter to college.”

“She knows how to get there.”

“Douglas Bryant, you get back on that highway!”

The truck turned right. Doug followed.

“Doug, you’re going to get someone hurt.”

“Yeah, that fucker in the truck is gonna hurt.”

Marie crossed her arms and shook her head. She placed a call. “Hi, Stacy, your father has decided to be a fucking idiot again, so we’ll be late.”

“Love you, honey,” Doug yelled.

“Yeah, bye, sweetheart.” She ended the call. “Happy?”

“I will be. As soon as this assclown learns his lesson.”

“And what lesson is that, dear?”

“To fucking drive.”

Marie sat with her mouth agape. “Unbelievable.”

Doug started to respond, when the truck hit its brakes. Doug slammed on his, and skidded around the truck. “Fuck.”

“Shit, Doug.”

Doug got his bearings back, but the truck was gone. “Son of a bitch!”

“Can we go now?”

“I guess so. Fuck!” Doug shifted the car into drive and headed back along the two land road.

“Do you know where we are?”

“Somewhere between where we exited and the college.”

“Not funny, Doug. Do you know how to get back to the highway from here?”

“Oh, I’m sure it’ll be easy enough. We’ll just drive along until we get to a major road again. I think we passed a couple.”

“You think?”

“Yeah. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

“Typical.”

Doug drove slowly, trying to pick out signs. “Get your phone out and find out where we are.”

“Fine.”

“See, phones make driving better.”

“Not now, Doug.”

He leaned forward across the wheel when the car lurched forward. “The fuck?”

The white truck sped by, the driver’s middle finger extended toward the sky.

“Oh, that is it. You are fucking dead.” Doug sped toward the truck, forty, then fifty on the speedometer.

“Doug, slow down.”

“Fuck that, he hit my car. He’s a fucking menace.”

“So are you.”

Doug ignored her as he merged back onto the highway. “See, back on the highway. No problem.” He kept pace with the truck. Seventy. Eighty. Ninety.

“Doug, slow down.”

“I’m fine.” He wove in and out of traffic.

“Shit, Doug, not again.”

“What?”

“Look behind you.”

Doug grimaced at the police cruiser lights. “Well, at least that asshole will get a ticket, too.”

Ahead, the truck slowed alongside a whiter Mercedes.

“Shit, that’s Stacy,” Marie shouted.

The truck bumped her into the guard rail.

“Fuck you.” Doug pulled up behind the truck and clipped it from behind. “You are fucking dead.”

Marie turned around. “Stacy’s still driving. She’s seems okay.” She turned back. “Let him go.”

“No fucking chance. He’s a goddamned menace, and I’m going to stop him.”

“Doug, let the police handle it.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? I stop, he’ll stop with me. Call ahead to some other shithead to stop the truck, but who knows if they’ll find him.” He rammed the truck again. “Probably too damned busy writing tickets for texting.”

“Doug, enough.”

“I’ll decide when it’s fucking enough.” He pulled up to the back corner of the truck and turned, sending it into a spin. It hit the cement wall and came to a stop. “Give me my gun.”

“Doug, I don’t...”

“Give me my fucking gun!”

Marie didn’t move.

Doug reached over her and took it. He stepped out of the car. “Come on, fucker. Get out.”

The police cruiser stopped.

The driver of the truck got out. Bowl in hand.

Doug marched closer, gun extended. “You almost killed my daughter, you jackass.”

The driver tossed his bowl at Doug. “Why don’t you cry about it, old man?”

Doug tasted the wet, sweet, gummy contents. “Oatmeal? You fucking threw oatmeal at me?” He leveled his pistol at the driver’s head.

“What, are you gonna shoot me, old man?”

Doug fired a shot over him.

“Shit!” The truck driver fell to the ground.

“Put down the weapon,” the officer ordered.

Doug looked back. “This asshat almost ran my daughter off the road. Twice.” He kicked the bowl. “Because of his fucking oatmeal.”

“Put down the weapon.”

Doug shook his head. “No, I’m not the bad guy. This little shit is who you need to fucking arrest.”

“I won’t warn you again. Put the weapon down.”

Doug stared at the pistol.

He heard tires squeeling.

He saw Stacy crash into his car.

He saw Marie tossed from the car over the side of the highway to the underpass below.

He saw the semi drive out with Marie on the hood.

He heard the tires screech and the engine rumble.

He dropped the gun and ran toward the crash.

The officer yelled something he didn’t hear.

He ran to Stacy.

Blood was everywhere. Her limbs broken and at odd angles. Her eyes lifeless.

He glanced down and saw the half written text message.

He didn’t fight when the officer shoved him to the ground.

BIO: R Thomas Brown reviews crime fiction at his blog rthomasbrown.blogspot.com and crime novels at Crime Fiction Lover. His writing appears around the web and he has a novel coming in 2012 from Snubnose Press.

Interlude Stories - Dana C. Kabel

2011-10-07T18:19:00.000-05:00

WRITER’S CELL BLOCK - DANA C. KABEL

Pete woke up kissing cold concrete and his head felt like it was splitting in half and the bottle of whatever he drank the night before was trying to crawl out.

“What the fuck?” he said in a broken glass voice.

Someone laughed. Springs creaked.

He peeled his sore eyes open and focused on the vagrant that was sitting on a metal cot trying to light a used cigarette. Next to the cot was a steel toilet with no lid, and the only door in the room was made of steel bars.

“Oh shit...shit...shit...”

“Good morning, sunshine...” the vagrant sang, laughing.

“Shut up,” Pete said.

“Hello, how do you do-ooh...”

“I said SHUT THE FUCK UP!”

The vagrant laughed harder. The smoke from his lit cigarette butt smelled like burning shit.

Pete rolled onto his back and tried to conjure up his last memory. He was sweating and shaking and bile burned in the back of his throat. A jail cell was the last place in the world he wanted to detox.

The last semi-sober memory he had was the visit from his agent, Derrick, in his favorite bar in the Village.

“You must be done with the book if you’re in here celebrating at ten in the morning.”

Pete threw back his sixth shot of Jim Beam and tossed the glass over his shoulder.

“Classy,” Derrick said. “What have you got for me?”

“Sit down. Have a drink. Party just started.”

“Godamnit, Pete! Do you know what a deadline is anymore? There’s money invested in you. A book tour lined up. You were given an advance on the next Jake Bracer novel. Give me something...anything!”

Pete signaled for the bartender to bring another drink.

“I got nothing, Derrick. The well is dry. Jake Bracer is as fucked as my liver.”

It went real fuzzy from there. Pete knew that his agent threw a fit and grabbed him by the shirt. He reached down to feel where it had ripped, but he was wearing an orange jumpsuit now.

“Fuck Jake Bracer,” Pete said to the cold concrete floor.

“Holy shit,” the vagrant said. “That’s who you are! I knew I recognized you.”

He jumped up from the cot as if it were on fire and grabbed onto the bars.

“Guard! I want out! You can’t lock me up with this maniac!”

“Shut up, old man. You’re the only maniac in here,” Pete said.

The vagrant started laughing again. He slapped his hand on his knee and bounced back onto the cot.

“I read one of your books. Mostly I seen them Jake Bracer movies. Every time they make another one your picture is all over the local news. What’d you do to get in here?”

“I don’t know.” Pete rubbed his head and tried to remember more.

“All right,” Derrick had said as he followed the stumbling writer out of the bar. Pete looked past him at the building they had just exited. Could have sworn they were in the Village, but now it looked more like Queens.

“We can work around this. I’ll make some calls, get you in rehab and use the publicity to promote the next book. The public eats that shit up.”

“I told you I’m done with Jake Bracer. Not...writing...one more...fucking...wordaboutim.”

“Yeah, yeah...you’ll feel different when you get out of rehab. And we’ll keep making money off of Bracer. We’ll hire an up-and-comer to write the next Bracer under, ‘Pete Bishop’s Jake Bracer.’ You know, like Patterson does.”

“Like Patterson...” Pete snorted sarcastically. “Guess I really am at the end of my career. Listen to this, Derrick. I brought Bracer into this world and I will be the only one who takes him out. The day I go pimping my characters out to so-called up-and-comers is the day I go back to digging ditches.”

“Then you need to get your drunken ass behind the keyboard and write it out yourself. Because we have a contract and Milton House owns the rights to Jake Bracer, in case you’ve forgotten. If we want to, we can have someone write a Jake Bracer versus the vampires from Twilight and there’s not a goddamned thing you can do about it.”

Derrick fell out of step because he was at his car by the curb. Pete stopped, swaying side to side in his tracks. There was someone in the passenger seat of the car.

“Who the fuck is that?”

The agent’s mouth curled into a malicious grin.

Then Pete noticed that they were standing in front of his apartment complex in Tribeca, which was fucking impossible because he had barely taken a dozen steps out of the bar in Queens.

“His name’s Tommy Tuller. I introduced you to him at the Manhattan Project Suspense Writer’s conference a couple of months ago. He’s been doing a lot of ghost writing for Milton House for the past couple of years. Great writer...he just needs a name,” Derrick said.

“The fuck is he doing here?”

“He’s going to be writing the next Jake Bracer book while you’re getting yourself cleaned up.”

“Like fuck he is...”

Pete swung at his agent. He could have sworn that he saw the Tuller asshole laughing his ass off in the car. The punch caught air and he stumbled. Before he knew what was happening, Derrick was steadying him on his feet and clapping him on the back.

“There, there...you can do this,” Derrick said.

But they were standing inside Pete’s apartment, both Derrick and him. Tommy Tuller was there too...duct taped to a chair in Pete’s dinette, his eyes wide with terror.

Pete looked down at the baseball bat in his hands. It was a wooden Louisville Slugger, just like the one he had as a kid.

“You can do this,” Derrick said again. “Come on...you’re not seriously going to let this little fucker write the next Bracer book, are you? You brought Jake Bracer into this world...you’re the only one who should be able to take him out.”

Pete’s hands were sweating. He was starting to shake. Oh God, when was the last time he had anything to drink. He didn’t want to get the DT’s.

“Now take him out! Take him out!” Derrick shouted.

The Tuller kid shook his head furiously side to side. Little shit was going to steal his character...his creation...his whole...life!

“DO IT!” The agent said. “DO IT NOW!”

Then the bat was in both of their hands, like they were fighting over it. Not for possession of the club, but to push it into the other’s grasp.

The Louisville Slugger whistled through the air and Tommy Tuller shrieked through the duct tape as it cracked his head open like a thick egg. Something warm and wet splattered across Pete’s face. He swung the bat again and again and again...

“Bishop! Visitor!” The hulking guard shouted through the bars.

Pete looked down at his hands. No bat there...no blood...But he suddenly began to remember some of the in-betweens as he scrambled shakily to his feet.

Derrick had been on his ass for months about a new Bracer book. The publishing house had the rights to Jake Bracer and Pete just didn’t have it in him to write another one. He finally agreed to meet with one of the young “up-and-comers” Derrick had been pushing. The agent had suggested meeting right at Pete’s apartment for an informal discussion.

“Sit at the table and talk to your visitor on the telephone. You have fifteen minutes,” the guard said.

Pete sat down and picked up the phone on his side of the booth. His agent picked up the other one.

Derrick was grinning from ear to ear.

“Goddamn, dog...you are something. Wait till you see the publicity from this shit. You are all over the news...you can’t buy this kind of advertising. As soon as you get processed and transferred to Riker’s, I’ll have a laptop ready for you so you can start the next Bracer book.”

“Fuck you,” Pete said.

“Come on, Pete...the well can’t be dry anymore. Aside from all the publicity, you got some new experiences to draw on. Murder...prison...institionalization...Your blood alcohol was to the fucking moon. Our lawyer says you’ll do a short involuntary manslaughter ticket with some time in the nut house and in rehab. You’ll dry out and have all the time you need to get back to work.”

Pete looked down at his hands. He didn’t know if he had swung the bat into Tommy Tuller’s skull or if Derrick had.

The agent hung up the phone on the other side of the booth and got up to walk out into the free world. Pete tried desperately to remember who really swung the bat. He wondered if it even mattered.

BIO: Dana C. Kabel’s stories have appeared in A Twist of Noir, The Flash Fiction Offensive, Muzzleflash, Mysterical-E, Out of the Gutter, Powder Flash Burn, and Yellow Mama. Dana blogs at http://www.thenonstopbullet.blogspot.com/.

Interlude Stories - Sue Harding

2011-10-07T18:18:00.001-05:00

IMPASSE - SUE HARDING

Kramer climbed the stairs. The treads were old but the plush carpeting muffled any creaking. He leaned back against the wall and craned his head upwards, staring into the gloom. A thin shaft of light cut across the ceiling on the landing, tracing a line diagonally from the closed door. From behind that same door came a noise that Kramer recognised. Indeed, it was a noise he had come to loathe; it echoed around him, invading his dreams and his waking thoughts alike.

“Now I’ll have you,” he thought, a smile puckering deep inside his cheek, his jaw clenched tight in determination. “It ends tonight.”

He stepped higher, his head adjusting to the new angle as he kept his eyes on the line of light that pointed towards his target. Progressing up the stairs, he reached the open landing and inched his way along the wall. He knew the layout well; the floor plan was ingrained in his memory. Three paces brought him level with a bathroom. The door was slightly ajar, but the dimness assured him it was unoccupied. Kramer knew that. The woman was away, and Medway was the sole occupant of the house.

He passed the bathroom and moved on, silent footsteps giving no hint of his presence. Now he stood at the doorway, a thin strip of light that escaped along its opened edge giving a brief description of the shapes and colours that lay beyond. Again, that staccato noise interrupted the silence.

He laid his hand gently on the door, counting the beats of his heart, waiting until he sensed the moment was right, and closed his other hand firmly around the gun. On the third beat he pushed the door smartly open, raising the gun swiftly, locating the back of the man’s head.

Inside, the bright light made his eyes smart slightly, but he quickly adjusted his vision to compensate. He focused on Medway’s collar, his gun tracing a bead two or three inches higher, his hand tightening its grip, caressing the trigger.

“You’d better come in, Kramer.” Medway’s voice was clear and concise, but his head remained turned away from the doorway, as if he was preoccupied with matters more pressing than the gun that was aimed at his own head.

Kramer was slightly bemused, but his experience had taught him that giving over too much brainpower to deal with the unexpected often resulted in making unwise decisions. Snap judgements and gut feelings moved the action along – hesitance inevitably brought too many variables to consider and with them, too many chances for failure. He stepped into the room, continuing to train his gun on the back of Medway’s scalp.

“I’ve been expecting you,” said Medway, the staccato tapping from his fingers pausing slightly in hesitation before briefly continuing. The last sharp rap on the keys hinted at the finality of a sentence or a paragraph and he turned his leather desk chair round to give his attention to the intruder.

Kramer squinted. He’d been planning this for a while and shared the details with no one. Just how Medway could have had an inkling about this latest development was anyone’s guess, but now he thought about it Kramer realised it wasn’t the first time Medway had surprised him.

“Put the gun down, there’s a good chap.” Medway relaxed back into his chair, idly twisting a pair of horn-rimmed spectacles between his fingers as he concentrated on the would-be assassin. He noticed the drab grey raincoat the man wore, the soft brown leather gloves encasing powerful hands. He knew exactly what those hands had been required to do over the last few years. Even the hat sat at its usual rakish and slightly off-centre style.

Kramer focussed on Medway’s portly figure slumped in the chair, noting the yellow stained hands that bore witness to the many years of devotion to nicotine. Even now, a tall column of grey-blue smoke drifted upwards from the cigarette wedged between his chubby, sausage-like fingers. Kramer wondered, again, how such stubby digits could have the dexterity to pound out chapter after chapter at such speed. Yet now, there was an uncomfortable silence.

“I know you won’t be able to fire, so you might as well put the gun away,” said Medway matter-of-factly. “I’ve known since the minute you decided to call here tonight. Like I’ve known all along that this time would come.”

Kramer lifted the gun slightly and tried to squeeze the trigger. To his surprise, nothing happened.

Medway gave the smallest of chuckles. “We’ve had a grand old time, haven’t we? But now we’ve reached the end, you and I,” he said, lifting the bottle of Bushmills and pouring himself a congratulatory drink. “I’d offer you one, but...”

“Oh, yes,” replied Kramer. A self-satisfied smile replaced the unforeseen inability to just pull the trigger and have Medway’s brains spattered across the keys of his beloved antique Remington Deluxe. “We’ve reached the end alright; I’m not going to carry on doing as you want, acting the way you dictate. I’ve been taking this crap for the last thirty years but it ends tonight; a parting of the ways, you might say. It’s the final chapter for you.”

Medway lifted his glass in salute. “Well said – mind if I use that?” he smiled, turning in his chair. “I was just looking for the right words to round things off.” Truth be told, Kramer had hung around far too long. There were new ideas Medway wanted to explore but he’d reached an impasse with Kramer; the guy bored him rigid.

With that thought, Kramer found himself rooted to the spot as Medway resumed his position over the keyboard and the final clacking of the keys sealed his fate.

But Kramer had learned well. Just when the reader thought they’d got to the end of the story, there was always that last, subtle, unexpected twist from Kelvin Medway - the master of suspense.

As Medway typed the closing sentence, the final full stop resonated in echo with the discharge from the gun. For a second he slumped slightly forward, his face slowly turning towards the smoking barrel. He watched in slow-motion surprise as Kramer’s face changed, taking on an elated look as, for once, he experienced independent thought. His finger released its pressure on the trigger and Medway saw his form slowly diffuse into thin air, exiting with an ethereal echoing laugh.

In the final seconds before his heart gave up trying to cope with the loss of blood from the wound inflicted by his own his creation, Medway realised neither of them could have survived. His eyes tracked sideward to the note he’d scribbled down earlier and he smiled.

It was the title for the final book in his ‘Kramer: PI’ series.

“Impasse”

BIO: Sue Harding has been scribbling stories all her life. Recently 'retired' from working in a library, she now has more time to concoct her own little mysteries and maybe one day her former colleagues will be putting her books on the shelf! She blogs at http://www.irefusetogoquietly.blogspot.com/, including a weekly 300-word challenge 'Thursday @ 3'. Aside from writing crime/thriller/mystery fiction, her other passions include red wine, Real Ale and knitting - the alcohol fuels the imagination whilst the knitting concentrates the mind for weaving intrigue and suspense!