A Twist Of Noir 535 - Ian Withrow

CHIGGER - IAN WITHROW

The Silverado pulled in behind the parked police cars that lined the side of Forest Service Road 256. Sam Finley got out, finished his cigarette. Made his way to a group of police officers huddled near the blockade. Each officer held a Styrofoam cup and a look that said they were too young to be here. Sam’s detective badge was out by the time he reached them.

“Where?” he said.

The one with the buzzed haircut pointed to a gravel road that went off into the woods. He looked like he was going to be sick. The others stared at their shoes. Sam went past them without breaking stride.

The gravel road took him through a hallway of pine trees, up a short incline. The cabin was a small A-frame number, with a short porch and a sign over the front door. The Hobers, it read in charred letters. A cloud went over the sun. Everything was under its shadow.

Billy Kane was on the porch, badge pinned to his denim jacket.

“Hey, Bill.”

“Sam. You’re not going to believe this one.”

“Bad?”

“Gruesome.”

“Who found ’em?”

Billy gestured to a roundish man standing over a fresh pile of vomit a few yards away. “Name’s John Chambers. Has a cabin nearby. Found the kid in the kitchen. Said he was lying on the floor, moaning all kinds of crazy things. About chiggers.”

“Chiggers? The little bugs?”

“Yep. Chambers found the body soon after.” Billy wiped his mouth, grimacing.

“And?”

“Wasn’t much. Mostly skin.”

“Jesus.”

“Just wait.”

The inside was living room, kitchen, bathroom. An officer stood in the corner taking pictures. It was humid. Mid-July heat cooked the unventilated cabin. All of it smelled of slaughterhouse.

“Bedroom?” Sam said.

Billy pointed to a closed door.

“Body?”

Billy nodded.

The kid was sitting on a wicker chair in the living room.

“What’s his name?”

“Tate,” Billy said. “You want to see the uncle first?”

“No. Kid’s pretty messed up?”

“Royally. He was wrapped in that blanket when I got here. Still hasn’t stopped shaking.”

Sam approached the kid. Beneath the blanket he was shirtless, wearing green shorts. The bloodstains were brown. The kid didn’t look at him. His eyes were fixed on something beyond the wall.

“Tate?”

No answer.

“Tate Hober. Can you hear me, son?”

No answer.

“Bring one of those chairs from the kitchen, would you, Bill?” Billy crossed into the kitchen, careful not to step in any evidence. The evidence was strange. Like something had already walked through it. Billy returned with the chair and a cigarette between his lips. “I’m going outside,” he said.

Sam waved him away. He set the chair in the kid’s line of vision and sat down. The kid looked young, maybe fifteen. Covered in blood. Red streaks ran down his cheeks like war paint. His St. Christopher medal stuck to his chest.

“Tate.”

The kid’s eyes looked through Sam as if he wasn’t even there. His teeth clattered together. Sam put a hand on the kid’s shoulder. The kid flinched. Eyes focused.

“Tate Hober.”

“Y-yeah?”

“My name is Detective Finley.”

“Hey.”

“You want to tell me what happened here?”

“Happened? What happened?”

“That’s what I’m asking.”

The kid frowned, confused. Sam glanced around the room. Saw a set of fishing poles stacked in the corner and a fly fishing vest hanging nearby.

“You go fishing this morning?”

“Yeah, fishing. We went fishing.”

“Where’d you go fishing?”

“Up the Blackfoot.”

“Any good?”

The kid shook his head. Scratched beneath the blanket. “No. Just fishing. I got nothing. Uncle Rich said he got a bite, and tha...that’s all. Just one bite. We came home.”

“What happened when you came home?”

“Just one b-bite.”

Sam returned his hand to the kid’s shoulder, this time with sympathy. “Did you and your uncle get in an argument, son? Maybe he called you a name? Maybe popped you a few times and you didn’t like it?”

“Wh-what?”

“No one likes to be bullied. Everyone’s going to understand if yo—”

“What? No. We didn’t fight. We never fought. He had a bite. A big one. On his arm. He k-kept scratching at it. Kept saying that it hurt like a bitch. Hurts like a bitch, Tate, get me some of that ointment it hurts like a goddamn bitch!” A tear rolled down the kid’s cheek.

“Something bit your uncle? What, like a horsefly?”

The kid wiped a second tear. Smearing the blood. “Kept scratching at it. I got him ointment and he went in the bedroom. He wanted to lie down. H-he didn’t close the door. I could see him lying on the bed, rolling around. Scratching. I-I think maybe he was crying. I went to the kitchen, to clean up dinner and he...he started s-screaming...and...and chan-changing...”

“He started to change?”

Billy returned. Sam acknowledged him with a glance, eyebrows raised. Billy mouthed a word. Sam nodded.

“His skin...it f-fell off...”

“What exactly bit your uncle, son?”

The kid shook his head.

“Was it a bug? A chigger?”

Something flashed across the kid’s face. He closed his eyes. He was screaming before he opened them again.

“Chigger! God, he was a chigger! And he was on me, oh, God, Mama! Mama! He was on me! Mama! I want Mama! Oh God, he was on me! Mama!”

The blanket slid from the kid’s shoulders. A baseball-sized welt protruded from his chest, oozing fluid. Sam shot up from his chair, motioned for a police officer.

“Jesus, get him out of here!”

The officer stared at the kid, wide eyed. “Where?”

“Town. He needs a goddamn doctor. Go!”

Sam and Billy stood on the porch as the sirens faded away.

“Ever see anything like that?” Billy said.

“Never.”

A tree branch cracked in the woods. Sam froze. Something heavy thumped away into the trees.

“What is it?”

“Nothing. Thought I saw...never mind.” Sam said, and slapped the back of his neck, at the slight pinch of an insect’s bite.

A Twist Of Noir 534 - Dave Brady

THE PENTHOUSE - DAVE BRADY

Eighty minutes after Laura had sent Edmund into Chinatown for party favors, they waited in the foyer for her private elevator to deliver what she had called, ‘The Handyman.’ Edmund, rather than call 911, gave her the benefit of the doubt. When the doors hissed open, out stepped, unmistakably, a janitor - small, old, in greasy coveralls, carrying two steaming coffee mugs and a toolbox.

“Miss Creel,” the janitor said, setting his toolbox down, “green mug’s for you. Mr. Veale, is it? Here, drink up.” He winked at Laura. “This’ll sober you up.”

“There’s a dead rentboy in the dining room,” Edmund said, tipping a sip of coffee onto the floor, “and you call your actual bloody janitor to deliver us a cuppa?” The janitor, unfazed, took a knee and rummaged out from his toolbox a rag and spray bottle and wiped up the spill.

“There,” he said, polishing the tiles. “Good as new, Miss Creel.”

“Yes, yes. Buff, polish, and Bob’s your uncle! Mightn’t you need more than a rag for the rest of it? Or hasn’t the cow told you?”

Laura frowned and sipped her coffee. Her eyes, like the rentboy’s, were far away.

The janitor’s knees creaked as he stood. “No, she’s told me everything.”

“In London,” Edmund said, eyeballing the little man, “I’d have rung the shadiest solicitor I could find.”

“But this’s Boston,” the janitor interrupted. “The Birches building. So you got me instead.”

“Now I realize custodial engineers are possibly relied upon more heavily this side of the Atlantic,” Edmund started, but then, in the old man’s gray eyes, he recognized a perspicacity that suddenly made his mouth shut.

“Miss Creel, you’ll need a shower. Not here. In 5B. And, Miss Creel? It’d be nice if nobody saw you.”

Laura went to Edmund. “This should make you feel better,” she said. As she kissed his cheek, she surreptitiously poured the contents of her lipstick flask into his coffee.

“I daresay it’s just the thing,” he said dryly, wiping her kiss off his cheek.

Before slipping out the stairwell door, Laura turned. “Please, Edmund, just do whatever the hell he says. He’ll fix this.”

For you, Edmund thought. He prayed ‘Mr. Fix-It’ was all Laura had cracked him up to be. A scandal like this, Edmund Veale would be more than ruined. He’d sinned plenty, betrayed colleagues and plundered client accounts, either to save his own skin or more richly cover it, but this was different. This was, at best, manslaughter.

Even if the facts prove her hands filthier than mine, he thought, plan B already forming.

“Mr. Veale? Why don’t you finish your coffee and take me through the night?”

“Why not?” Edmund said, downing the hot cup, his mouth and throat still numb from the pharmaceutical-grade party favors. “I went out, found the boy for Laura. He said he had everything we’d need for a good time so I brought him back to the building. Here, in the kitchen, we met Laura. And refueled, as it were. Soon the party was in full swing. There. On the dining room table, mostly.”

The rentboy, about nineteen or twenty, was splayed on the glass tabletop, asphyxiated with a belt. Beside him, about half an eight ball, a razor blaze, and a straw.

The janitor sighed. “I can’t wait for the eighties to be over. Okay. You must be wicked tired, Mr. Veale, right?”

Edmund yawned. “Exhausted, actually.”

The janitor opened his toolbox on the table. “Why don’t you wait in the parlor for Laura?”

And so Edmund did, and soon he fell asleep.

When he opened his eyes, his aching head nearly split in the effort to reconcile the sight before him. Tall, gorgeous Laura, like Blodeuwedd of myth, a girl made of flowers, and her janitor. Too tired to smile, never mind move or speak, Edmund watched and listened.

“A fight,” she was saying. “Edmund wouldn’t leave so I roamed the halls. I do that when I can’t sleep. Mrs. Tuttle from 1C? The other day, she told me Management was renting out 5B, fully furnished. I was curious, so I knocked on the janitor’s door to see if I could have a look. When Mr. Fix-It, sorry, when the janitor saw my face, I had to tell him of course what happened. After begging him not to call 911, he offered to let me spend the night in 5B. I mean, I knew Edmund had a dark side, but nothing like this.”

A dark side? Edmund thought. And what’s the matter with her face? He tried propping himself up, but was so stiff even the memory of movement escaped him. Until the janitor looked directly at him, he considered that maybe it was he who’d died.

“Mr. Veale,” the janitor said, shaking his head, “you smacked Laura around, then binged on booze, drugs, and the boy. The tragedy was accidental, so the evidence tells. Thanks to my special homebrew, you won’t remember a thing.”

Edmund realized then that he wasn’t on the sofa, but the table. Naked, next to the dead boy. His blood burned inside him. He pictured anguished tears floating off his face like steam.

“And it’s believable?” Laura said.

“He’s English. It’s believable. Ready?”

Laura glanced at Edmund, then shut her eyes. The janitor swung her a punch. Edmund wanted to scream, but he could hardly breathe. His body trembled. Then, something in the panicked way the janitor rushed over, Edmund could tell he was dying. He could tell, too, that the janitor was nearly as surprised as he was.

“I already fixed it,” the janitor shouted, about to throw another punch.

“Him giving me two black eyes?” Laura said. “That’s stretching it a bit.”

The janitor grimaced. “I’m sorry, pal, but you weren’t on the lease.”

Laura Creel’s voice was the last sound Edmund ever heard. “Take what you want and pay for it, says God, says some proverb. At least you won’t be paying for it the rest of your goddamn life.”

BIO: Dave Brady is a writer from Boston, MA. His fiction and nonfiction have appeared in both print and online media, including The Portland Phoenix and UnMadeUp.com. Currently, he attends the Stonecoast MFA program in Maine.

A Twist Of Noir 533 - Jane Hammons

THE CORNERS - JANE HAMMONS

Originally published in Kitchen Sink Magazine in Summer 2003

Until I left with Rory, I shared a tiny one-room trailer with my mother who used to wait tables at the Corners before it turned into a self-serve cafeteria. Even when she was a waitress, she was a whore, so when the diner went self-service, she became a whore full-time. Most of her customers were truck drivers who kept her occupied day and night. When I wasn’t asleep, I lived in the cafeteria where I’d had a job bussing tables and tending the cash register since I was in junior high. At night, I retired to the old Rambler station wagon that has been parked outside the trailer for as long as I can remember. For as long as I can remember, it has rambled nowhere.

In cold weather, I ran a cord into the trailer so I could turn on my electric blanket; warm, I rolled down the windows, opened the back and counted the headlights of cars passing through the night.

Living in the Corners, you learn to read the tired, cranked-up anger of truck drivers running behind schedule; the agitation of tourist Daddies driving their families around to visit Indian pueblos and to hike on the mesas.

Where are the nearest petroglyphs? How far to the lava tubes?

Living in the Corners, you learn to hear the real questions.

How can you live in a place like this? Want to fuck?

For years, I dreamed of murder. Truck drivers, bikers, hitchhikers. More often the girl whose family was driving her to college. Slipping into her skin, I’d take my place in the back seat of the station wagon, squashed between two little brothers who loved me more than anything in the world. I would miss them terribly. But there was no turning back. My luggage was piled high atop the station wagon and strapped down with bungie cords. Rory promised me a life on the golden beaches of California. When I left the Corners, all I took was the extension cord and my electric blanket, its frayed wires exposed and dangerous.

As soon as we found a little apartment in a shabby neighborhood across the bay from San Francisco, Rory took me to the local Goodwill and bought me some used-up career clothes and some run-down practical shoes to wear when I went job-hunting. He told me to be sure to mention that I had worked at the same place for over 10 years. Employers like long-term commitment, he said. Then he took off on a fishing boat. Every month, he deposits money in a checking account. In this way, he tends to my needs.

From the fire escape, I can see the Golden Gate Bridge. I know there must be a beach nearby. But I spend my days in the apartment: two square rooms; living room, bedroom; two rectangular ones; kitchen and bathroom.

The dog lives three houses over behind a white stucco box with a fake cottage front. He is chained to a post at the entrance of his ramshackle tin shed. The chain is long, extended by a fraying rope looped through the collar around his neck. It allows him to cover every inch of the hard-packed earth that is his yard. Sometimes he naps in the shade of a scraggly tree. Like the tree, the dog is fed and watered, but never really cared for.

He is sadly happy. He leaps after butterflies and birds, the staked chain yanking him back to earth. He is a loud, carefree barker. Whenever I venture out onto the fire escape, he greets me sharply. He accompanies the far away foghorn and the whistle of the trains on the tracks nearby. He answers the screams and giggles of small children in the neighborhood and the insults and loud music of the older ones. When he barks too long or too loud, the neighborhood begins to twitch.

When you live in the Corners, you learn to feel it: children cooped up in the corners of cars; dogs and cats imprisoned in travel cages; wives needing to pee; husbands longing to drive their minivans over the nearest canyon ledge. Here, too, I feel the twitch of the people who surround me, especially the wretch who gives the dog exactly three barks before she barks back.

“Would you keep your dog quiet?” she whines. She never says anything else. Just ‘Would you keep your dog quiet?’

When the woman whines, the dog usually stops barking immediately. If the woman whines twice, his thin arthritic owner limps out into the backyard and beats him with a heavy stick. I believe that, like me, the woman watches this.

In November, the fog closes in. The foghorn bellows day and night; the dog barks; the woman whines. Given the height of the apartment buildings and the angle necessary to see over the bungalow, I predict fourth floor, street-side window.

When you live in the Corners and spend your days listening to trucks approaching from miles away, you learn to measure distance through sound.

I put on my career clothes and stuff the extension cord into the pocket of my jacket. I migrate from one apartment building to the next, standing amid the stiff shrubbery that surrounds each, sometimes moving beneath the broad leaves of the obligatory palm tree. A few neighbors glance my way. It is possible that they have never seen me before. It is certain that theyve never seen me in my career clothes and practical shoes.

Occasionally, I check my watch as I’ve seen others do and look down the street as if waiting for a ride. At noon the gaily-dressed pack of small children clamors by, waving their construction paper creations as they skip home for lunch. The sharp anxious barks echo off the building across the street.

A hand appears at the bottom of a heavy dark curtain and raises the window an inch or two. “Would you keep your dog quiet?” Fourth story, end apartment. Street side. The next day, the woman has a visitor.

I knock at the door, and it is opened quickly by a woman in a wheelchair. “Good morning,” I say. “I am from the Temple Mission. We’re out this morning to see how many of our Brothers and Sisters need assistance getting to church.” I imitate a woman who has often come to my own door.

“Well,” she whines. “I’ve told you people before that I won’t go to your church, but I could use some help with my shopping.”

Already I know she is the kind of person who takes for granted the things she should simply be grateful for. “We might be able to do some shopping for you.”

“My neighbors shop for me,” she whines, backing up to let me in. “But they always get the wrong things. I want someone to take me shopping. Do you have a van with a lift?” She rolls over to the window.

“Yes,” I say. A pink cupid adorns her coffee table, its plump plaster hand offering Coffee Nips. I walk to the couch and sit down, taking a Nip. I twist its shiny wrapper carefully and place the candy on my tongue. She follows me in her wheelchair.

“Twice a week,” she declares. Her coffee scented breath is too warm on my face. “And I will only shop at the little market down the street.”

“We can arrange that.” I give her a moment to look satisfied with herself before I grab the plaster cupid and bash her head in with it. I take out the extension cord and twist it quickly around her neck. Blood drips onto my shoes. I drop Cupid to the floor where he lands with a thud next to the Coffee Nips that have spilled from his generous hand. I take one and put it in the pocket of my career jacket along with the extension cord that has blistered her neck.

Back in my own apartment, I lie down on the couch in the corner by the window. I am awakened in the afternoon by teenagers marching noisily through the street. I look out the window to watch the dog enjoy his first moments of freedom. He barks one, two, three times then stops to listen. Frantic, he sniffs the air and attempts to jump the fence. The chain around his neck pulls him back to earth. He barks furiously and races about the yard. His confused arthritic owner comes out and hits him with the stick. He whimpers and crawls into the corner of his shed. I fall back onto the couch and sleep until morning when the children will once again pass on their way to school.

One, two, three times, he barks then pauses, waiting for the whine. He barks louder, more insistent now. The old woman comes out and beats him with the stick. Freedom, I remind myself, takes getting used to.

The next morning, I am up before the foghorn begins. I go out and sit on the fire escape. It is cold and the fog is so thick that I can just barely make out the figure of the dog three houses away. He sees me and falls into his maniacal pattern: three barks then wait. Three barks then wait. Three barks then wait, and now the owner is furious. She flies out the kitchen door, slips and lands hard on the bottom step. The dog comes to her side. She kicks him in the face and struggles to her feet. She beats him until he is silent.

Later, a siren screams down my street. The police car stops at the old woman’s apartment building. Neighbors crowd onto the sidewalk. The dog goes berserk. Her death is briefly important. Brutal, the local paper calls it. Savage, neighbors whisper. The dog barks constantly. His owner gets her exercise marching back and forth from her kitchen wielding the stick. Yesterday, someone threw a bottle over the fence. I heard the glass break as it hit the cement patio. Last night, someone threatened to shoot him.

It is 5:00 A.M. and very foggy. I station myself beside the window. Stepping behind the curtain, I slide the window open two or three inches and wait. The foghorn begins and the dog barks one time, two times, three. He waits and turns his eyes accusingly toward me. I smooth my filthy career skirt. I have begun to smell. My rundown shoes are stained with dried blood.

I can feel neighbors shift in their half sleep, waiting for it to begin. “Would you keep your dog quiet?” I whine.

The dog returns to his corner. I return to mine. There will be no question about what I have done. Clues are everywhere. Killing in California can get you the death penalty. I don’t care. In life there are all kinds of penalties. Death is just one of them.

BIO: Jane Hammons teaches writing at Berkeley and is working on novel. A section she cut will appear in July/August Crimespree Magazine. Some of her writing and soon a blog can be found at Fictionaut.

A Twist Of Noir 532 - Graham Bowlin

WHAT NEEDS PAINTIN’ OVER - GRAHAM BOWLIN

I once been told that I ain’t got no good in me and that I never would. That’s just how she say it. “You ain’t got no good in you and you never will, Charlie Withers,” she say.

See, me and her were gettin’ together and she’s in love with me, and one day, she come to me and say that she was pregnant. And it was mine. So I say to her I’d marry her. That’s all I say. “Well then, I’ll marry you,” I say, just like that.

I went back to my hotel room that night, smoked some shitty dope she’d gave me, and thought real hard about what I’d said. Next day, I told her I was gettin’ the fuck outta town. I had changed my mind.

She cried and screamed and called me a liar. But she wrong. I ain’t a liar. I just change my mind. Simple. Every day, politicians pass laws, start wars, all kindsa crazy shit because they change their mind ’bout somethin’. I don’t get what the big deal was about me changin’ mine. And her feelin’ bad didn’t mean shit-all to me. Way I see it’s like this: you go ’round worryin’ how other people feelin’ and, pretty soon, you be carryin’ around so many other feelins from other people that you ain’t gonna have any room for your own.

People ’round town had started in askin’ a lot of questions ’round then, so it was time to be movin’ on anyway. So I went that night to her Daddy’s store, the one I was workin’ in, and I drilled a hole in the little safe. I got two grand and change, threw it in my duffle bag and got the hell outta town.

I headed from North Carolina down cross the border into South Carolina. There’s three things that South Carolina good for and that’s churches, fireworks, and the dirtiest dime piece strippers you ever gonna find in your life. I love South Carolina.

Now, the last one probably make sense to y’all, but the former might be a bit confusin’. See, I got a very particular line of work. I take things from other people. It’s a great job ’cause I don’t need an office or a tie or any tools or nothin’, ’cept the drill that time and I stole that. I only need one thing: gullible idiots. And after years of research, I discovered that the best place to find those is in a church.

I needed a place to lay low, maybe some more shit to steal. Church was a good start. So I just drove for a while till finally I hit somethin’ I thought looked pretty good. Old rundown piece o’ shit church in the middle of nowhere. It was early Wednesday and the parking lot was full up. It’s good to hit ’em on a Wednesday. On Sundays, everybody’s there ’cause they gotta be. But, on Wednesday, you hit the real holy rollers. The real generous, stupid ones.

I pulled my new Chevy truck over into the gravel parkin’ lot. I had just traded it back at a restaurant over the border. Gave the other sonofabitch a ‘gently used’ Buick Skylark, no extra charge. I liked the truck real well and was glad I hadn’t got the red Camaro. I’d almost gone for it, but it was too flashy and I changed my mind. Let the poor bastard keep taking all those speeding tickets.

As I stepped outta the car, the sun goddamn near blindin’ me, this ancient nigger come walkin’ outta the church on a cane.

“Hello, boy!” he say.

I ignored him callin’ me boy, as me rippin’ his fuckin’ head off wasn’t ’bout to get me anythin’ out of him.

“Hi there, sir,” I say.

“Hi there,” he say back.

And we just stood there in the fuckin’ sun bakin’ like bread, me waitin’ for the dumb old bastard to speak, him waitin’ for somethin’ to come into his fuckin’ head.

I did his job for him. “Sir, I don’t mean to be botherin’ y’all, I know you got a service and everythin’, but I’m lookin’ for some work. Some help, you understand?”

He stared at me for another minute, yellow eyes goin’ all over the place, thinkin’ about God knows what. His eyes settled on my duffle bag.

“You a travelin’ man?” he ask me.

“Yeah,” I say.

“Well, son, I reckon I kin help.”

I spit at the ground, just to show him I’d do it, spit right there in front of him. “Yeah?” I say.

“I reckon, yup. I got this ol’ barn, older’n Christ. I needs to git it painted.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah...” he say.

Ever tried carryin’ on with a nigger ’fore? It’s goddamn near impossible to get anywhere. So I just shook my head and climbed into his pickup truck. Floor was so rusted out I could see the road flyin’ by underneath me as we drove down the road.

“Where ya from, son?” he ask.

He sat there, chewin’ on his lip like he was waitin’ for me to respond but, like I told you, there ain’t no point in tryin’ to talk to them people so I didn’t say nothin’ back. Finally he just shrugged his old shoulders a little bit and stared back at the road.

His place was way out in the middle of goddamn nowhere, took near half an hour. He had a farmhouse, a shed, and a barn. Everythin’ was a real old piece o’ shit, ’specially the barn. I had no idea why anybody would wanna get the thin’ painted up, but there’s no point in trying to get a ’groid to listen to any kinda reason.

We went inside the old house. There was a little living room and a kitchen and a dark hallway that went off somewhere. I look around for some good stuff to steal, but there ain’t much. Shotgun hangin’ above an old television and some Hummels, that’s ’bout it.

“You kin sleep onna floor,” he say. “Put yer bags an’ what not ovuh there.”

I dropped my duffel bag on the wood floor by the couch. If there’s one thin’ you can say ’bout a nigger, they real trustworthy. Hell, they ain’t smart enough to trick anybody, ’cept maybe another black. And then, what they gonna steal from ’em? There’s nothin’ to take.

He went into the kitchen and grabbed a paint bucket and a brush, then he take me outside and we look at the barn. It’s all fucked up, painted white in different places, like they was all done at different times. Some people just can’t finish a task.

“So you just paint the barn white, see?” He waved his hand in the air like he’s showin’ me how to paint, like I’m a retard.

“Yeah,” I say.

“All right, dinner seven o’clock. I’m leavin’ now. Goin’ out.” he say. “Oh, and my grandbaby aroun’ here somewhere. She come help you, maybe.”

“Yeah,” I say again.

He turn and goes stumblin’ through the field, all overgrown, back to the house. I pretended to get ready to paint for a minute, pullin’ open the can and what not, when I heard the truck pull away and down the road.

I turned back to the house, goin’ for that shotgun, when I seen his granddaughter. Goddamn, she look good. She musta come out soon as the old bastard left, ’cause she was damn near ten yard away from me, smiling at me. I nearly finish my business right their in my pants, just lookin’ at her.

First of all, she must have had a helluva lotta white in her ’cause she had the prettiest yellow skin I ever seen. Her little titties stood up under her old dress, showin’ her nipples for the whole world.

“Hi,” she say.

I didn’t say nothin’. I kept on staring at her, lettin’ her know I saw how good she looked and I liked it. I could tell real quick that she liked me, ’cause she kept lookin’ at me all nervous, like girls do when they all wet.

“What you doin’ out here?” I say.

“Comin’ to help,” she say.

She laughed, then looked all around to make sure we was alone. She smiled at me, then turned and ran back to the farmhouse, picking her knees up high in the tall grass, her little ass bouncin’ as she went.

I ain’t gotta tell you I sprinted myself after her, and I had her pinned against the wall ’fore the screen door closed shut. I tried kissing her, but she turned her head away and started to push me down onto my knees. She didn’t have to ask my ass twice. I was halfway between pullin’ her dress up and her panties down, so close to seeing that nice little hairy hole, when I felt somethin’ I hadn’t felt in a long time... The barrel of that shotgun against my back.

The girl wriggled away from me real quick. I looked over my shoulder and saw the face of that old nigger, grinnin’ down at me. The girl kicked me real hard in the balls and laughed.

“This one even dumber than the other ones,” she say.

“Stannup,” he say.

I stood up. I looked over at the girl. She was already tippin’ up my duffel bag, lettin’ all the money spill everywhere.

“Damn, granddaddy! This one got alotta money!” she said.

“Good job, baby,” the old nigger said.

My dick was still hard and I didn’t know what to say.

“I thought you was leavin’,” I said.

He snorted at me like he was laughin’.

“I changed my mind,” he said. He cocked the shotgun, said to me, “Now let’s go on out back to the barn. See what needs paintin’ over.”

BIO: Graham Bowlin is a recovering Southern gentleman, currently hiding out in Los Angeles where he lives with a girl, a cat, and a hangover. His stories have been featured in Thuglit, Powder Burn Flash, A Twist of Noir, and others.

A Twist Of Noir 531 - Tom Larsen

SURVIVOR - TOM LARSEN

There’s this guy, lives in Siberia, or the Sahara, some godforsaken place, pick one. And he’s been there for years, good and bad, and he’s made do and has no interest in the bigger picture.

One day, a pair of soldiers stop him. A border tax has been imposed.

“I know nothing of your borders.”

“Ignorance of the law is no excuse.” The thin soldier smirks. The fat one eyes the guy’s pelts or whatnot.

“And if I don’t pay?”

“We have no choice but to confiscate your goods.”

The guy knows what this means. He came from far away to escape things like taxes and soldiers. He’s a man who’s learned how to keep what’s his.

“I pay you, I suppose.” He studies them.

“Of course.” Thin one smirks. “As representative of the regime.”

“And how much is your tax?”

Thin one quotes some exorbitant sum, more than the guy’s whatnots are worth. They are deep in the jungle or desert, miles from any outpost. The soldiers are armed but careless.

“In that case, I’ll not cross your border,” he tells them.

“But you already have.”

“Then I will go back.”

The soldiers look at each other and laugh.

“Too late, my friend.” Thin one fires a thin cigar. “You’re here, that means you owe.”

The guy says nothing. He’s been robbed before and talk gives the thief advantage. He watches fat one move for his pack mule.

“What’s in these bags, pilgrim?” He sets his rifle aside.

“Nothing of value.” The guy’s fingers find the grip hidden in his horse’s mane.

Fat one cuts the straps and flips the bags open. He reaches into the first pouch, pulls out a sack of coins or gems.

“Nothing of value, eh?” He tosses the sack to thin one and reaches in the second pouch. Thin one works the drawstring cackling madly.

“It will take a few minutes.” The guy kicks the gun away and scoops the viper out of the sand.

“Dear God, I’m poisoned.” Fat one holds his hand, wheezing from his knees.

“Not to worry,” the guy steps over the dead one to retrieve his mace, “you’ll bleed to death before the venom takes effect.”

A Twist Of Noir 530 - Tom Larsen

DEAD RECKONING - TOM LARSEN

He’d been dreaming it for so long, even socked away money in the event. Then the towers came down and there it was, a way out. His attorney’s office was in the Trade Center and his was a familiar face. Insurance would take care of the family, his rat bastard partners would get the shaft and the sad fact is no one would miss him.

So he did it. Hopped a bus at Port Authority and a plane in Newark and was set up in Vieques before the dust settled.

And it was going so well. Sleepy island paradise, no questions asked. Then he ran into Rolph, what are those fucking chances? Rolph had no clue but knew people he knew. Sooner or later, the jig would be up.

So it wasn’t like he had a choice.

BIO: Tom Larsen has been a fiction writer for fifteen years, his work has appearing in Newsday, New Millennium Writing, Puerto del Sol and Antietam Review. His short story “Lids” was included in Best American Mystery Stories – 2004. His novel FLAWED was released in October. He’s been published here before.

A Twist Of Noir 529 - William Blick

THE FLICKERING - WILLIAM BLICK

The old man sat in darkness except for the flickering of the movie projector on the small screen, which the images danced across. He knew the images. Knew them well. He had called ‘Cut!’ and ‘Action’ when they were produced. On the heels of the French New Wave, he brought European sensibilities to American horror films in the late 1960s. His films were praised as ‘straddling a thin line between high art and visionary grotesqueness,’ as the Times critic wrote. He was enormous in his field. A giant of the cinema. An auteur, visionary, and prophet. Now he was a broken man estranged from his only child, a daughter who was a drug addicted actress in Los Angeles. His wife was long dead. She had taken her own life. Now all the man had left was a musty old mansion and these images dancing across the screen. He lived like a hermit. He had a nurse, Edna, to cook for him and help him with several more private hygienic activities.

Edna was the only person with whom he would interact except for the occasional phone call from the Royalties division at Caravan Pictures.

On Thursday morning, down in a sordid room on Hollywood Boulevard, the old man’s daughter lay dead with a needle in her arm. Overdose. The boyfriend came to after being on-the-nod. He tried to wake her but he could not.

On Thursday, the old man, Jensen, was watching the images on his screen and smoking cigarettes against his doctor’s orders. Edna would be coming to check on him around 5 P.M. The doorbell rang. Jensen, angry, listened closely for the sound of the intercom.

“Hello, anybody home?” said the boyfriend. Then realizing there was an intercom, pushed the button to gain the old man’s attention.

“Hello?”

The old man pressed the button from within. “Yeah, who is it?”

“My name is Sal Caruthers. I’m a friend of your daughter’s,” said the boyfriend. The old man pressed the buzzer to let the boyfriend gain entrance. The old man on walking canes, stood in the doorway.

“If we could just sit down for a moment,” said Sal.

“What do you know about my daughter?”

“If we...”

“If you know something about my daughter, you better tell me now.”

“Mr. Jensen, your daughter is dead.”

The old man looked with a glance that was unsettled but not surprised. He began to walk to the parlor.

“I’m sorry, can I offer you a drink,” said the old man. The two walked slowly into the parlor. The old man poured the scotch and handed a glass to Sal. They sat on the vintage furniture and stared at one another.

“How?” said the old man, with watery eyes.

“She overdosed.”

“On what,” said the old man.

“Heroin”

“Did you shoot heroin?”

“No, I tried to help her.”

“Yes, she was always quite headstrong. Beyond help. Beyond anything. I suppose that was my fault.”

“Mr. Jensen, it wasn’t your fault. I’ve heard a lot about you. She used to talk about you all the time and everytime your movies were on cable, we watched them.

“I suppose I’ll make the arrangements,” said Jensen.

“I’m sorry. I loved her, too. Loved her. We were going to get married.”

“When?”

“Next year. As soon as I sold one of my scripts.”

“This town is a leech, boy, it will suck you dry.”

Jensen sat in his favorite chair. A tear ran down his cheek. He looked over to the picture of his daughter on the mantle. He thought of her childhood, walks in the parks, puppy dogs, ice cream in the summer, looking for seashells.

The waves of Jensen’s memory washed over and soon, he fast-forwarded, like in one of his films to the burnt-out shell of a person that Llewelyn had become. She was always off with one of her boyfriends. Didn’t he care for her? He would give her anything she wanted if she had just come home.

“May I use your bathroom?” asked Sal.

“Last door on the right.”

Sal wandered the hallway for a time glancing at photographs and awards and an Oscar. He washed his face in the bathroom sink and then walked into the foyer and double locked the doors. Then he walked back into the darkness of the living room, where Jensen sat sipping scotch and gazing at the flickering images on the larger movie screen against the far wall. Jensen wasn’t really watching the images; he was deep in thought.

Sal poured himself another scotch and sat down on the easy chair across from Jensen.

“Jensen,” said Sal in a louder than usual voice.

“Yes,” said Jensen, somewhat startled.

“Now, I need your full attention,” said Sal and, with that, got up and stood in the rays of the projector.

“Your daughter was a degenerate drug addict. That is why she is dead. But before she died she told me things.”

Jensen nearly dropped his scotch and his heart pounded fast. Who was this man? What did he want?

“What kinds of things did she tell you?”

“She told me of your selfish, rotten stinking obsession with film and how you neglected your wife. How she threw her life away because you were a fool. How you never showed your own daughter any love or affection. The only affection you had was for the flickering images on the screen.”

The flickering antiquated images danced off of Sal’s forehead and nose.

Sal continued. “She also told me of the 5 million dollars cash you kept hidden in this rundown old mansion. That you were saving to finance and invest in a final picture. A final picture that would never come.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” said Jensen, clutching his canes.

“5 million dollars to finance an independent film of horrfying proportions. While your own daughter struggled on the streets, all you could think about was your lousy movies.”

“She could have had anything she wanted, but she chose the streets.”

“Shut up, Jensen. Shut the fuck up! I am going to say this and say it only once. You will tell me where that money is, or I will take a piece of your flesh for every time you hold out on me.”

“But the nurse, Edna, will be here. She will call the cops.”

“Don’t worry about Edna. I’ve already taken care of things.” Sal withdrew a blue nurse’s scrub top from his back pocket. It was stained with blood.

“What have you done with Edna?” said Jensen.

“Let’s just say, she will make good fertilizer for that great lawn of yours out in the back.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about. There is no movie. There is no money.”

Sal withdrew a switchblade from his pocket and flicked it open. He walk over to Jensen and played it over his soft, wilting flesh. He held it to his eyelid and pulled on the eyelid with his index finger and thumb of his opposite hand. Sal then let go of the lid and worked his way down with the knife to Jensen’s thumb. He pushed hard with the blade and sliced cutting a large gash in Jensen’s hand.

Jensen let out a scream. “There is no money.”

Sal wiped his blade with a rag he had in his pocket, “That’s once, Jensen. You’ve got plenty of body parts. Plenty of time to tear the flesh. Tell me where you keep the money.”

“I don’t know why she told you that. It is a lie. There is no money! Now, I beg you to please let me go. I won’t call the police. Please leave now.”

“You leave me no choice. There is nothing I like better than teaching a selfish old fool like yourself how to share with others.” Sal walked over to the old man. This time, he had wire cutters in his back pocket. It seemed like he had an endless supply of gadgetry in his pockets for supplying pain.

“Give me your hand,” said Sal. The old man had his hands behind his back. “Give me your hand or I will break your arm and cut your thumb off.” The old man held out his arms. Sal used the wire cutter to remove Jensen’s pinky.

*

Sal waved the smelling salt under Jensen’s nostrils. Jensen had blacked out from the pain. “Where is the money,” asked Sal. Jensen was trying to establish his surroundings and he felt unbearable pain coming from his left hand.

Think hard. Think fast. What to do? What to do. What would Harry Carver in his films of the ’70s do to get out of this situation. Money. Money. Fear. Pain.

“Alright, Mr. Caruthers,” said Jensen, out of breath and struggling for air, “you win. I will show you where it is.”

“No, tell me where it is.”

“I have to show you, but you have to help get me down the stairs into the basement.”

“I don’t like it. You try any funny stuff and I’ll shoot and bury you next to sweet Edna, you dig?”

“I don’t want any more pain. Please.”

Sal helped Jensen onto the motorized seat that lifted him from the top of the long staircase in the hallway down to the old basement. When Jensen reached the bottom, with Sal right behind him, Sal asked, “What’s all this stuff?”

There were movie cameras and film canisters everywhere. “Why, this is my laboratory. Many of my films ended up right here.”

“I don’t give a shit, you hack. Tell me where the money is!”

“Alright, please don’t get angry.” Jensen, still sitting in the motorized chair, had a rag wrapped around his pinky. Blood was seeping through and onto his pants.

Jensen continued, “Do you see that door?”

“Yeah,” said Sal.

“That is the door to the cellar. At the base of the stairs is a lockbox with combination. 25-32-19 is the combination. You will find the cash of 1000 dollar bills in there. Be careful. There is no light.”

Sal looked at Jensen with distrustful eyes. “At the bottom of these stairs, huh? What are you up to?”

“Look, Mr. Caruthers, you hold all the cards. I am but a simple broken down old man. You’ve already took my finger. What more do you want?”

Sal began his descent down the second staircase. He could feel the moist, damp air on the back of his neck. He could smell the mold.There was no illumination except some light seeping in from a dirty window. He struggled in the darkness. A faded sound was getting louder.

“There is something I forgot to tell you, Mr. Caruthers. We’ve had a slight infestation of rodents as recent, that I’ve not quite got the chance to take of.”

Jensen hobbled over to the door to the cellar, using the canes for support and slammed it closed. He locked it with a dead bolt. Down in the cellar, Sal was looking at the lockbox, the sound grew louder as the vermin closed in for their feeding. Thousands of rats scurried across the floor and took bites of Sal’s flesh. Scores of them overcame Sal’s body. He fell to the ground and screamed.

Above, in the basement, Jensen turned on his infrared camera and pointed it through a hole in the basement floor to peer at Sal and the feeding frenzy of his flesh that ensued.

“One more thing, Sal,” he shouted. “There is no money, but, as for that final movie, well, this is my final masterpiece — a chaotic, frenzied death scene. A brigand eaten to death. This one will be great. This one will last forever in the annals of time. A fitting farewell tribute to death.”

The rats chewed through flesh, organs, tissue, muscle, and bone. The squealing was unbearable. It only lasted about ½ an hour.

BIO: William Blick has published work in Mysterical-E, Pulp Pusher, Pulp Metal Magazine, Beat to a Pulp and many others.

A Twist Of Noir 528 - Cecelia Chapman

NOT FOR LONG - CECELIA CHAPMAN

By the time Hugo recognized me, he was already drunk, his female companion gone. He said he was staying in a nearby hotel, so he sat drinking and talking to me over the bar. After my shift, busboys helped walk him up the hill to my apartment. He passed out in the hammock, drunk, true, but absolutely not the rumored addict or alcoholic. My former soft-fleshed, bratty-boy employer was a hard-boned man with thick, scarred hands that made sandpaper sounds while he slept, clenching and unclenching hammock rope.

One key in his pocket. Wallet with three credit cards. Cuban passport, completely blank, except for one rubber-stamp seal of a jaguar in a bleeding tree, a smiling baby in its mouth, marking his entry into the country yesterday and a date of birth making midnight, two hours ago, the first minute of his thirty-seventh year alive. Pale blue handkerchief with the initial A. Made to order linen jacket with a welt under the left arm. Woven sandals. Tissue-thin Uluwatu t-shirt.

I was picking through him when he opened one eye, chuckled and passed out again. I was doing this, I felt he understood, because I brought him into my home. And for other reasons; second-hand stories followed him, obsession, loss of fortune, wife, a long trial, his disappearance, and his rare sightings that were like jokes. I kept a practiced eye on him through the night, from my bed to his terrace hammock. I didn’t want to regret bringing him home.

Yachts jockeyed into harbor early. Winds were ripping open the black crack on the horizon, a sliver of black sky had remained through the red dawn. Now it was widening, as if night had won.

“I saw her.” Hugo said this to me, watching the street, drinking espresso.

“Who?”

“The woman I saw. The woman everyone said I didn’t see. I’m going to tell you something. Then forget it. I went for a run. It was a beautiful day. I thought about you. You just left the company, the country, him... I’m sorry. I always respected you, and you left it all, for your writing. I can see you made a better life. I wonder what I have?

“When I went for that run, I was feeling good. Alison and I just made love. Had I known, well, it was the last time... We planned the day together, I took time off work. We weren’t connecting, I was afraid she was seeing someone. I asked her if she wanted to go on the run, she said she’d wait in bed for me.”

Cards printed with bleeding hearts pierced with arrows and dripping blood lined the threatened parade route. Tied in trees and posts, they made a whirring, rattling sound. Some came loose in the high breezes, flopping on the terrace, like fish thrown on wet sand, slap of flesh. Torn flamboyant flowers covered everything. Scarlet petal carpet like skin on my floor every morning.

“On the run, in the hills, I found a woman fallen on the ground. She was warm, breathing, but unconscious. I covered her with my sweatshirt. Running back, I found people with a cell phone, they called an ambulance. When I returned to the woman, she was gone.

“That should have been alright. But a beautiful woman is hard to forget. I told Allison. Not that I thought the woman was beautiful, but that I had found her, then that she was gone, and that is why it took me so long to return. She laughed at me. Allison laughed. Not unlike her. I still remember the way she turned over, got out of bed, laughing.”

Long before this religious festival, same time of year, was a rain celebration involving human sacrifice. The celebration occurred in jungle ruins, surrounded for miles with carved rock rattlesnakes the size of a curled-up man. One day, all the snakes disappeared. Later, I saw them in the museum, in the capitol, so many of them. Immediately real, they seemed more alive than in the bush, fleshless, angry creatures in a cold white room. When I returned later, I could not find them anywhere.

“The day was ruined, our time together, somehow, now I know, Allison distant. I can’t remember what I did, but after that I started drinking, heavily, other things... made bad judgements, hiring employees who embezzled. Allison left. She divorced me, she took the company, proving I was incompetent. Well, no, first I just didn’t show up for three weeks and when I did, a guard stopped me. When Allison sold the company, I was in jail for fraud, accused by her. My father died suddenly, the shock, I never saw him...”

“But where have you been living and what exactly...?”

“None of that matters now... I drank hard for three years...

“...I was in a bar when a ship comes in, sailing vessel, really something, sleek, maybe 50 crew, big money just floating in... fishermen are laughing and yelling at the women walking down the ramp. This is the first time they have seen this, women who want women in a group like this, entering their port, their town. The women are hugging, kissing, in shorts, barely shirts. Fishermen are yelling, ‘Make me captain!’ The owner of the boat I’m working on points and says he wants that pair. It’s Allison. With that, woman I saw. They got into a taxi.

“I sobered up fast and borrowed a ‘friend’s’ taxi. They weren’t hard to find. The rest of the afternoon was spent watching the hotel beach deck where my ex-wife and the woman were drinking. Bickering, holding hands. It lasted an eternity of hell. I thought my anger would burn me in the taxi, the whole taxi, just ignite it, or attract lightning. Gone in flames, like that. I thought a lot of things, I remembered a lot more. I would have gone in, maybe bought them a drink, but I smelled like fish guts. I’m not happy in designed bars with white canvas tents and umbrellas and the way I was feeling, well, I’d just better stay low. Eventually they went looking for a taxi.

“I took them back to their ship. Allison got out of the taxi first, not a glance at me. The other woman paid, checking me out, hungry. So I pushed up my dark glasses. She backed out fast. I lived off her look for a long time, it set me free, it’s true, truth sets you free.”

Hugo parsed sea, jungle and street. Big girls slinking through town in holiday dresses, sexy with red lips, holding hands with little girls carrying the chicken home for lunch. Tourists at cafe tables drinking breakfast beers, waiting to record the procession with small devices in their hands. Little boys racing all over. Men talking outside the bar. Nuns crossing the graveyard, the church square. Women stopped in the bakery door, blocked by a boy pulling a horse spooked by the cards snapping and whistling in winds. The balloon man twisted a jaguar from a balloon, enigmatic screeches erupting from the felt tip marker passage across taut latex leaving hieroglyphic spots, teeth, bloody claws.

Thunder purred in liver-colored clouds. Flashes of light snapped far out to sea, like something broken, beyond repair.

Hugo sat across from me on my bed. Cleaning his sunglasses with the handkerchief, he looked me straight in the eyes for a long time, searching for something. I guess he didn’t find it, I didn’t see any questions in his eyes. He put his sunglasses back on and wandered to the terrace.

“I stopped drinking. I answered an ad for a personal assistant, whatever that meant. I didn’t have a bad life. I had a nice little place on the hill, good food, surf. I was broke, living day-to-day. But I had work fishing, on charters. And I could always find someone, some tourist, to buy drinks. I spent a lot of time doing that. Sometimes I fixed computers and made easy money.

“My new employer sold weapons, rented guards he trained himself. He was a fitness freak with a father high up in government. He liked me. We listened to music, I showed him how to surf, we went fishing, hunting. Sometimes we ran barefoot on the coast, sleeping out with nothing but knives. I kept account books for him, made arrangements. He read Hemingway in English, and asked me about many things, and told me interesting things I found useful later.

“One night, we got drunk and I told him what I’m telling you now. He said I should stalk her, scare the hell out of her, maybe let her live, in fear, it’s better. He liked fit people around him, he didn’t like hot-heads, complainers, whiners. He had me train early in the morning with the guards in the camp. It cooled me off. He said it’s easier that way.”

I followed Hugo’s scan from sea to beach to street and graveyard jungle. I tripped on a chair, dizzy from light changes. Hugo was at the far edge of the terrace focussed on a woman, two men paced behind her. She, walking down the alley past relic stalls, festival booths, stopping for questions, photographs, notes in a tiny notebook, picking things up to look at here, talking to a seller there. But not for long. Hugo let out a sharp whistle, piercing, like he was calling a dog. Everyone on the street looked up, but could not see through the flamboyant tree branches over my terrace. The woman turned her head around and around. She looked to the men behind her. Her body melted into a grotesque posture, flat-white panicked face, in the shadows of the church where she threw herself against the wall.

BIO: Cecelia Chapman lives in Northern California. She produces short video and images, and writes short fiction that examines the way we live and think, the human hunger for adventure, mystery and illusion.

Interlude

Before you read all of the stories to come today, I highly recommend the following.

Jason Duke has his third installment of the four part PHOENIX NIGHTLIFE up at CrimeWav.com, ready and waiting for your ears.

Robert Crisman has a new tale up over at Fictionaut titled EVICTION. Check that out.

Chad Eagleton has a new story up at Thrillers, Killers ’N Chillers called THE LAST CIGARETTE, which I know you’ll enjoy.

And Mike Wilkerson has a new story in the latest (but hopefully not the last) issue of Thuglit titled FIVE KILOS. Have a read.

Interlude

Crime Factory #4 is now live and yours for the reading.