A Twist Of Noir 691 - Col Bury

LOSING TRACK - COL BURY

“So, when you at court for that burglary then?” asked Shanks, sucking on a spliff. He passed it to his flatmate, Drifter, the dingy room like a mini-rave, Eminem’s Slim Shady booming.

“Some time in January, innit. I’ve got the charge sheet somewhere.” Clutching an X-box control, Drifter motioned to look for the said sheet, but couldn’t be arsed and reclined on the tatty sofa.

Most of the items in the flat were ‘borrowed’ – the X-box, flat screen telly, matching DS’s, and even the cigs and cans of Stella littering the coffee table, the latter picked up from a skip.

Shanks crushed an empty can and tossed it over his shoulder. “Candice... bring us two more Stellas in, would-yer, babe?” He heard faint sirens in the distance, but couldn’t be sure if it was on Grand Theft Auto or not. Maybe it was, as he’d just reversed over a cop.

Paranoia kicking in, for the first time in three hours, Shanks’ arse left the sofa and he headed for the window, peeping through a gap in smoke-reeking curtains to gaze down from the high-rise at the dotted city lights of Manchester.

The vividness of blue police lights jolted him to his senses. Six black shadows emerged from the white rectangular van, and snaked toward the communal entrance below, panic and uncertainty flooding him.

“Shit, it’s Five-O!”

Drifter glanced up, his version of startled. “Cool it, man. They could be ‘ere for anyone in the block.”

“You sure it’s not for you, Drift?”

“Look, man. I’ve done a few little jobs recently, but the only one those fuckers got me for was the one am in court for, so my slate’s clean. Chill.”

Shanks’ mind was all over the place, skimming the haziness for his recent ‘escapades’. He recalled potting a lad in Checkers two weeks ago, nicking an old Escort when he couldn’t get a cab home – not that he’d have paid anyway. Plus, he’d stabbed that student, but that was over two years ago, so surely...? Then there was the daily coke dealing. He could do with a line now.

Candice entered from the kitchen carrying two more cans of Stella, fag in mouth, Babylons to die for. “There you go, your bloody Highness.”

Shanks snatched the cans, gave one to Drifter.

“What’s up with yer?”

“Cops are sniffing downstairs.”

Candice looked round at all the knocked-off gear. “Well, they aint got this address have they? You’ve only been ‘ere a month.”

“No. Yer right. I need to calm the fuck down.”

Footsteps on the landing, all three froze, pivoted.

Bang, bang, bang on the door.

“Police, open up or we’ll put the door in!”

Drifter stood up, Shanks and Candice eyeing him.

He put his palms out. “What? I needed a bail address. Otherwise they’d have kept me in over Chrimbo, innit.”

“Yer should’ve give yer mum’s, yer prick!”

“RIGHT! WE’RE FORCING ENTRY!”

“Well, I’m not going down for Chrimbo either.” Shanks headed for the mini-balcony.

Candice headed for the door, opened it.

A cop holding a steel wham-ram burst through, just managing to keep his balance. He was followed by five more uniformed officers and a smooth-looking, sharp-suited detective.

Before you could say, “Gotcha!” Drifter was face down, cuffed to rear.

The detective held up a warrant, peering down at Candice’s Babylons.

She covered them defensively.

“What... yer... locking me... up for...?” yelled Drifter with a face full of carpet.

“Sus’ burglary times three, sonny boy!” replied a uniform.

“Detective Proverbs, darling. And who might you be?”

“Candice Jefferyson. What’s it to you?” she spat.

Proverbs turned away, discreetly speaking into his radio, receiving comms via an earpiece.

Three minutes later, the flat had been ransacked and Drifter sat sulkily on the sofa.

“So, why’s that wannabe-gangster boyfriend of yours skulking on the balcony? Guilty conscience?” Proverbs smirked, shook his head. “We’ve not even come for him. Seems you lot are in it so deep that you’re losing track.”

“Huh?” Candice looked perplexed.

“Candice Jefferyson, I’m arresting you on suspicion of robbery. You do not have to say anything...”

Everyone froze, as a diminishing scream emanated from the balcony.


BIO: Col Bury is the crime editor of award winning webzine, Thrillers, Killer 'n' Chillers, and he's currently writing a crime novel series under the guidance of New York agent, Nat Sobel.  Col's ever-growing selection of short stories can be found around the blogosphere and in many anthologies, including, THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF BEST BRITISH CRIME 9 (& 10).  He has an eBook out called, MANCHESTER 6.


Col lives in Manchester, UK with his wife and two children, loves 8-ball pool, and is an avid fan of Manchester City FC.


He interviews crime authors & blogs here: http/colburysnewcrimefiction.blogspot.com/
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/colbury
Twitter: @ColBurywriter
Facebook: The Manchester Series by Col Bury
Website:  http://colburysnewcrimefiction.wordpress.com/

A Twist Of Noir 690 - B.R. Stateham

FUNNY, REALLY FUNNY - B.R. STATEHAM 

“They’ll kill him, Smitty. They’ll kill my son. He won’t tell’em where the money is. He can’t tell ’em. He knows nothing about it. I stole the money. And I can’t give it back to ’em. I used every dime of it to pay the medical bills we racked up while he was in the hospital. Funny, isn’t it? I steal money from the mob to pay off my son’s medical bills. And my son dies anyway. Funny. Really funny.”

That was two hours ago. The confessions of a small-time hood, who actually loved his family. Loved his only son. The world is cruel, son. Nothing fair about living if you’re piss poor and there’s no one around to help pull the strings. You’re just another chump in an ocean of chumps. A fool in a graveyard of fools.

The kid was ten years old. A thin, sickly kid with the smile of an angel.

His only sin was his father was a small-time cog in a big city mob. A small time hood with not much brains.

“Where they hiding him?” he asked, eyes as black as stellar black holes boring into the face of the grieving father.

“Over on  Vermont in that empty gas station there on the corner.”

Smitty nodded, slipped dark shades over his eyes, and left the grieving father standing in the middle of his apartment. The drive across town in a light falling rain was almost surreal. Neon lights from a thousand different signs reflected off the wet streets in vivid  splashes of brilliant color.

A half block away from the corner of Vermont and Rose he pulled over and turned the engine off and sat in the dark for a moment.

Swift. Harsh. Ruthless. That’s how you succeeded in this line of business, Smitty thought to himself. Show no mercy. Offer no excuses. Walk in—do the job—leave and don’t look back. Never look back. In the darkness of the car a thin snarl of an unseen grin bent his lips back. Reaching inside his coat he pulled out a Remington .22 caliber semi-automatic. From a different coat pocket he withdrew a bulky-looking fluted silencer and screwed it onto the end of the four-inch barrel. And then he opened the door and rolled out of the car in one fluid, cat-like motion.

He had a knack. A talent. A natural gift. He moved like a feral animal from one shadow to the next in the brief walk it took from his car to the empty gas station and not once did a sliver of light reveal his presence.

Gripping the bulky weapon casually in his gloved right hand he moved up to the back door of the gas station and lifted his left hand and rapped twice on the door.

The door opened just a sliver—a bright lance of light flooding into the dark night. And into the sliver of yellow light the shoulders and head of a semi-tamed gorilla drifted. He didn’t hesitate. Lifting the weapon up in one smooth motion he put a slug directly into the man’s right eye and then stepped back and used a foot to kick the door wide open.

Inside were three other gorillas. All three were scrambling to their feet and reaching for their weapons when Smitty stepped in and pulled the trigger three more times. Puft! Puft! Puft!

Two dead. One almost dead. Walking over to the one living Smitty kicked the man in the face to get the man’s attention and stared down into the man’s pain-wracked face.

“Tell your boss he’s an idiot. Kidnapping a kid of one of his most loyal soldiers and thinking he’s going to get his money back is stupid. I took the money. Your boss weaseled out on paying me for my last job, so I decided to pay myself. Got that? Yes? Make sure you tell your boss when you see him.”

Just to make sure the wounded gorilla did remember Smitty slammed a foot hard into the side of the man’s face again.  

Be ruthless. Never look back.

BIO: B.R. Stateham writes hard-boiled noir. He’s almost as old as dirt, but it doesn't stop him from thinking up dark, mean stories to entertain the little kiddies in the dead of night. 

The 600 To 700 Challenge Concludes

It's been quite a long time since the Challenge has made an appearance and, finally, we're getting ready to wrap it up.

I want to thank everyone that is in this last group of writers (B.R. Stateham, Col Bury, Des Nnochiri, Jarrett Rush, Chad Eagleton, Phil Beloin Jr., Cameron Ashley, Ian Ayris, Eric Beetner and Jimmy Callaway) for their patience in bearing with me in the process of getting their stories onto the site.

Starting today, and going through the week at the pace of two stories per day, the 600 To 700 Challenge makes its return to A Twist Of Noir. All the way until the bloody end.

Interlude: The Retro Look by Albert Tucher

Diana Andrews turns forty!

I know you're not supposed to reveal a lady's age (please don't hit me, Diana) but forty is a reason to celebrate.

Her creator, Albert Tucher, and Untreed Reads proudly present to you THE RETRO LOOK, the fortieth Diana Andrews story (and longest at 9,000 words!).

And it can be yours for a buck-fifty.

A dollar-fifty for one of the best female characters in noir? Are you kidding?

Get all the info, as well as your copy, here: http://store.untreedreads.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=429

A Conversation With Richard Godwin

Christopher Grant: My first question is, when you sit down to create, do you have more than just a blank screen or page in front of you? Is it different with short stories than with a novel?

Richard Godwin: When I sit down to write a story I do not plan, sometimes it can start with a voice, a character talking, or an image, a variety of forms that seem to be demanding growth. Sometimes a story takes shape immediately and others need pruning. I write from all sorts of places. I also write every day unless it is impossible to do so. It is about practice and I like what Pablo Picasso said when he was asked why he worked so hard, he said because 'I want to be at work when inspiration strikes'. A novel is different. Apart from two novels I have written, I plan and edit. The edit is a critical part of the process and I make copious notes.

CG: What was the process for Apostle Rising like? How long did you spend researching? And how much of what you wanted to write wound up in the novel versus how much wound up on the cutting room floor?

 

RG: Writing Apostle Rising was non-linear with a linear plan. The truth is if you plan you need at some stage to let go of it. I researched certain parts heavily, certain parts I already knew. I wanted the characters to live and breathe. I wrote the first draft flat out in six weeks and then engaged in a heavy editing process. That involved layers of discovery. It is like an archaeological dig in which you find out truths about your own characters. A lot of passages I liked ended up on the cutting room floor. I think John D. MacDonald said sometimes you have to kill your darlings. If the passage has no relevance to the plot get rid of it. I can see now there is scope for more ruthlessness within that. The edit is revealing. It is a key part of the process.

CG: Do you prefer writing or re-writing? Do you consider yourself a better writer or re-writer? Or does it vary from story to story or story to novel?

RG: I love writing and all parts of that. Writing a story is quicker and in some ways more immediately satisfying than a novel, which requires careful editing. That can be a laborious process. When the breakthroughs come they are more satisfying with a novel.

CG: Let's talk about Apostle Rising now. I have said that I think it reads like a true mystery. By which I mean that in stories that are lumped as mystery stories or novels, you usually get the crime happening and the writer tries to set the stage for your eventual discovery of who the criminal is but, for some reason, they can't help themselves and, by the third chapter, either the writer has revealed who the criminal is or the reader has been given enough clues to make that discovery for themselves. Whereas, with Apostle Rising, it seems that you played your cards very close to the vest.

 

Did you deliberately set out to do so or did the novel just start to come together like that as you were writing it?

RG: I set out to keep the killer's identity hidden. I wanted the reader to experience the mystery a cop finds himself in when he is tracking an extreme psychopath, as well as the effect of dealing with evil. Within that process the novel assumed an organic life of its own. I kept the revelation about who is doing the killings back and the discovery is a surprise. No one has said they guessed who the killer was. That involves careful structuring, peppering the story with clues and involving the sub plot, in which there is also a guessing game about the killer's identity. Apostle Rising is as much about psychopaths who want to destroy and leave scars as it is about the resilience necessary for a cop to survive the investigative process that catching a psychopath involves, and as you know, the story is far from over.

CG: Without ruining the ending for those that haven't yet picked up Apostle Rising (and those who have already know the ending so the question will not be lost on them), is there a sequel to Apostle Rising in the offing?

RG: Yes there is a sequel. I am writing it now. My second novel, Mr. Glamour, was released in paperback by Black Jackal Books in April of this year, and the sequel to Apostle Rising will be released next year. It has just sold foreign rights to the largest publisher in Hungary, Alexandra, and there are other offers tabled. Suffice to say the sequel will explore the key characters in more detail and contain some fireworks.

CG: The violence in Apostle Rising and in many of your stories is over the top and very surreal. I believe that it's justified in all cases, but especially in a novel like Apostle Rising where the story is that of the police, and in particular two partners, dealing with extreme psychopaths, as you put it. The violence in Apostle Rising must be what homicide detectives in particular, worldwide, deal with on a daily basis and not the sanitized for your protection crap that they show us on police procedurals such as Law And Order and the like.

 

That said, have you ever had complaints about the level of violence that are contained in your stories or in Apostle Rising?

RG: No I have never had any complaints about it. If you really want some hard core violence try the Bible. The truth is I have read of worse things in the papers. People are encouraged to avoid the stark reality of the predatory universe we live in, F Scott Fitzgerald referred to it as crooning there are no wolves outside the cabin door. It is also a beautiful universe. If you study what serial killers do or what the Nazis did to their victims it makes Apostle Rising look like a vicar's tea party. Men and women were held in concentration camps where women were systematically raped and healthy men were castrated in the name of medical science. You see a nation in psychosis. I am writing about one or two individuals in psychosis. The surreal aspect may be to do with the fact that if you slow the camera down to ensure all aspects are visible the reader's brain goes into a self defence mechanism. If we ignore the lessons of history, if we conveniently brush away the less savoury aspects of human experience then we are doomed to repeat them. Crime cannot be sanitised and wrapped up at the check out in a department store. I have tried to be realistic about the fact that sometimes there is no moral redemption for those who have crossed the line and those who, badge bearing law enforcers they may be, have followed. We live in a culture full of myths. I am interested in opening them up and seeing what purpose they serve.

CG: What do purpose do you think these myths serve?

One of the myths in America (at least) is that pornography and sex should be swept under the carpet, that it's worse than violence. People with brain cells believe that wholesale slaughter, such as the massacre of people in Iraq or Afghanistan, is more pornographic than two people with their genitalia showing or touching someone else's genitalia, but these people are generally few and far between.

 

Why do you think it is that violence is more acceptable than sex? Do you think Hollywood has something to do with that?

RG: If you look at the mythologies of Ancient Greece as described in Ovid, they serve many purposes. They explain the world the Greeks inhabited and also their religious system. Some of the myths are interpretations of nature. Sex features heavily in them also, they use symbolic language to create meaning. Modern mythologies have become less complex and more part of a propaganda machine. I think Hollywood is responsible for the sex phobia that is appeased by images of violence. The Hollywood machine wants to sanitise sex and relationships to the point where it is actually peddle lies. There is no realism in Hollywood and if you look at the sexual habits of the key players you have to wonder. People fuck. They always have and always will. It is part of the human condition, and a valid subject. I think the fact that so many Hollywood films stick to a formula may be one reason the industry fears sex. It doesn't want to make a porn flick, which is probably all it would come up with. But erotic films never come from Hollywood. People are fed violence every day. That appeals to a certain machismo and head set about defence when defence may not be necessary. Lenny Bruce once said it is interesting that they describe sexual content as obscene and it is not obscene to show someone's guts hanging out. Perhaps because Hollywood caters to fantasies it is nervous to cater to sexual fantasies, it might be tantamount to admitting it is a massive whore. At the end of the day it seems mythology has come to mean lies. Lies about sex, lies about the economy, about the need for violence, about the lifestyles people enjoy and others aspire to. It is also connected to the rise of the theocratic right. Young men and women are meant to go to church and think pure thoughts, as Zappa paraphrased their saccharine values in Joe's Garage. The reason for this has to lie in the fact that if you shackle them into marriage and let them breed it's good for business, more punters for church. I think Hollywood is brainwashed. It is also in the pay of the plastic surgery industry, itself another mythologiser. Never age, never wrinkle. Some doctor somewhere has a drawer full of noses and they all look the same. Many of the shrieking crusaders bearing placards denouncing sexual acts are themselves so diseased their prurience is all they have to hold onto. They are frightened of their own desires which is why the seek out the thing that offends them. Politics is also a source of mythology. The need for war is surrounded by propaganda and myth. If you ask what a myth is doing in the modern world it will usually serve the economy or a belief system that is intent on denying some value that the ruling class finds threatening. The ruling class may be Hollywood or the pharmaceutical industry.

 

CG: How much of what we see in the news is actual news and how much of what is actual news is kept from us?

 

RG: I think most of all the real news is kept from us. There is a line in a William Burroughs novel in which a journalist says we make the news quite literally. I think it is fiction. Badly written fiction aimed at as Zappa said keeping you docile and ignorant. Propped up by the companies that commit serial rape on a daily basis. While they pursue all the bad guys. You know the most wanted ones. They bury the news beneath a massive plot. A newspaper is a narrative structure. If you study the juxtapositions of stories you are aware you have been placed in  a plot structure that is supporting the men who own the newspapers. Now some serious facts. Let's talk about Halliburton and Bechtel. Who pays them? The US taxpayer. The same taxpayers fund the military-corporate system of weapons manufacturers. Bomb and rebuild, same old army game as William Burroughs says in From Here To Eternity. Now for the Marshall Pan, the act of benevolence. Whose benevolence? Of the $13 billion of the Marshall Plan, as cited by Noam Chomsky in Imperial Ambitions, about $2 billion went to the US oil companies. If you look at the rest of the aid, it moved from one pocket to another. Go do the maths. The Financial Times is the best newspaper in the world because it contains detailed economic analysis that businessmen need. If you read between the lines you can figure a lot out. The truth is we depend on newspapers that are in the pay of their shareholders. The truth is in their pockets.

 

CG: I've been on your end of your question about parallel universes. So here's me returning the favor.

 

What are your thoughts on both parallel universes and doppelgangers? Have you had any experiences with doppelgangers?

 

RG: I believe there are multiple universes and we inhabit one. I think the powers that wish to capitalise out of us want to convince us of the universe. Henry Adams spoke of the multiverse. It is also a discontinuous one. Fragmented by the belief structures that aim for monopolisation.

 

The worm hole theory is a possible. Also the implosion of a supernova as one example of an event horizon being created. I have no experiences of doppelgangers. Although you have to ask yourself are you the ideal or the failed version. Poe wrote William Wilson. Edward Thomas wrote The Other in which a failed man pursues his alter ego through a rural landscape to be met with disappointment. Parallels are not about narcissism. Remember Echo imitated Narcissus.

 

CG: Taking off on that, do you think that the doppelganger is a manifestation of the ideal self or the manifestation of evil? And if the former or the latter, what does that say about ourselves?

 

RG: It depends which position you occupy.You have to remember most of the morality we are taught is riddled with guilt and religion. Now take Catholicism. We had a Pope banning the use of condoms in Africa when they may have halted the spread of AIDS. He was a good man. Or was he evil? What he did is certainly open to moral questioning. In whose eyes? In certain communities burying your parents in boxes is considered evil. Who's right? It's about moral relativism. Nietzsche said there are no moral phenomena, only moral interpretations of phenomena. Hamlet said there is no right or wrong but thinking makes it so. Now you have to draw the line somewhere. Most of us know where that is. An enlightened society would protect the vulnerable, the young and old, without propagandising and protecting the abusers of power while using the newspapers to point the finger at irrelevant statistics that amount to nothing. It all depends on the mirror. Maybe your double is yourself or your devil. What does that mean to you? Many people spend every other second hiding something, some sick little secret. William Blake frequently conversed with the devil. But you have to know what he meant by that. Gide wrote The Immoralist. Are your morals holding you back? Does the glue on the world seem to be holding fast? Maybe the devil is your shadow, all those things you brush under the carpet. See what you find out.

CG: We've talked about perception and about myths in society.

 

What, in your opinion, is the greatest lie of our time?

 

RG: That all parents love their children.

 

Many hate them because they fail, and that is a by product of the conditioning we were talking about earlier.

 

CG: Since we were talking about the pope just a moment ago, first, I suppose I should ask, are you religious? And, whether you are or not, what are your thoughts about organized religion?

 

Just for the record, I'm not religious in the least. I think there is a big difference between being spiritual and being religious. When I'm asked about whether I believe there's a god or not, I say, "I don't care one way or another. I'm not living my life so that I can get into a concept like heaven or hell. I don't treat someone differently just so I can get through the gates." And you'll notice that I don't capitalize the word god.

 

RG: No I am not religious. I have thought and read a lot about religion and while I believe there are spiritual truths within the texts of religions I believe institutionalising spirituality corrupts it. Then you have the organisers of the religion. History is packed with examples of the corruption of the ideals represented by religion. Let's turn our attention to war. So many fought on the back of religion. So it seems a good tool of propaganda. It often appeals to the uneducated and exploits them. I think it is an extension of politics. I also think if you get enough followers and enough money as L. Ron Hubbard did you can start a new religion.

 

CG: Burroughs wrote many, many times that we must evolve as a species and travel into space.

 

Do you think we will ever, as a species, evolve to this point?

 

Do you think that we have been deliberately kept from evolving to that point which we would be able to travel into space by the powers that be?

 

Have they kept us on this planet to milk every last resource off of it and only then, when that time comes, will they abandon the planet?

 

Or do you think that it is a fear of the unknown that has kept us grounded? The unknown represented by outer space itself.

 

There was a time on this planet (and it ended about the time the west was finally stolen from the Native Americans) when you would grow up to about the age of fifteen or sixteen and you would get yourself a mode of transportation (usually a horse) and you would set off over that hill and see what was beyond that hill.

 

When we, as a species, started into space, we set a goal of getting there, then going to the moon and then there was a goal of going to Mars (and I can still remember the Time Magazine cover talking about how, by 1986, we would have a colony on Mars; still waiting).

 

We don't have goals like that anymore, unless they come out of a windbag like Newt Gingrich, who would have a colony on the moon but it would be a US colony (no Russkies and darkies allowed, I'm sure the sign would say) and that when there were 13,000 people on the moon, they could become a state. Don't ask me how he arrived at 13,000.

 

And, even if you want that colony on the moon, you don't want this dickhead running anything, especially not supposedly running the United States.

 

RG: Many of Burroughs's observations about space travel are based on mutation theory. We have mutated as a species if you consider Darwin's theory of evolution which is an adaptive one. If we travelled to space it would present a different environment and therefore mutation would be involved. He posited various scenarios. One likely one would be politicians colonising outer space while the rest of us were left below. Burroughs thought the future of mankind may depend on outer space since we are messing up this planet.

 

If it is already happening it would be hidden from us. Programmes like the X Files put forward various theories to that effect. The military may have invented forms of space travel. However evolution doesn't always look pretty. Brion Gysin, who Burroughs credited with the cut-up technique, saw artists as explorers of space. Burroughs said writers are cosmonauts of inner space.

 

You may ally physics with Art. Take the latest theories from physics about event horizons and worm holes and see how these ideas are already present in Art in all its forms.

 

The two biggest economic forces on the planet are war and pharmaceuticals. So it may be likely that war and medicating the population is preventing them from understanding what is going on with space travel. A revolution may be a non violent one. If everyone threw all their medication away consider the outcome. Einstein talked about the space time continuum. Kurosawa said if all clocks were stopped worldwide there would be havoc. Space is in time, and outer space is in time. A medicated population digests what it is given and doesn't know what time it is. You have to consider to whose advantage that is. People treat newspapers as factual yet they are a narrative and contain fictions. Or maybe the earth is being replaced as a big theme park with one benevolent president and endless shopping malls. The West talks a lot about propaganda in other nations. Yet at the same time the propaganda machine of the West is subtle and more evolved and works through the channels on which its population has become dependent. The medical industry has an investment in people being ill, despite its claims to the opposite. The consumer society is based on acquisition and status as bases of identity but in fact they do not give identity, and the consumers are being consumed by a series of financial commands that ensure they are trapped in debt and imaginary need for things which they are told will improve their lives.

 

CG: In the grand scheme of things, was Orwell more correct or was Huxley?

 

In Orwell's 1984, the state is totalitarian and there are punishments for those that do not conform. The general populace is basically cut off from reality.

 

When I read 1984 for the first time, I thought of the populace being underground and, when they were above the earth, behind walls, much like a concentration camp.

 

Whereas, when I first read Huxley's Brave New World, I never got that sense. I always got the sense that here are people living lives that are not their own. They are us. They are medicated off their asses and just pop another pill to feel good and everyone has become homogenized.

 

This is what frustrates the fuck out of me when people, especially so-called liberals, talk about how we should all be one race and no one should have different cultural identities.

 

Are we all one human race? Yes. Should we treat each other as such? Yes. But should we give up our cultural identities? Should I stop being proud of my German and Russian and Irish and English and Italian and Polish ancestry? Should Barack Obama, for example, stop being proud of the fact that his father was from Kenya? I don't think so but you'll notice that the media and the right-wing have attempted to make him ashamed of this, going so far as to suggest that the president was not born in Hawaii but in Kenya.

 

RG: I think it is a mix of both visions and I use the word visionary. I believe we inhabit a pharmaceutical totalitarian state in the West. People are medicated off their asses and do not know who they are. They are cut off from the Naked Lunch as Burroughs put it, by which he meant that naked moment when you see exactly what is on the end of your fork. The homogenisation of man starts at school and continues through the one dimensional careers pursued by some in corporations which want to clone their workers. This may take the form of family roles. The word family derives from the Latin word familia meaning family, servants and domestics. Society is structured on that unit as a way of engineering human response to a set of stimuli which are political agendas aimed to benefit the interests of the ruling party. Being cut off from reality may take the form of extreme totalitarian propaganda or the medicated man we see now as the product of a society with certain economically based views about health.

 

CG: Do you think it's possible for dreams to predict future events?

 

RG: I think it is more than likely that dreams predict future events, since they scramble time lines. Grammar is a language and dreams communicate through an alternative means, they are more allied to a hieroglyphic sign system. If you consider the signifier and signified and you randomise the sequence then you have it. The subconscious rearranges events to suit our particular mode of reference and we need to interpret that, to understand it you have to go beyond causality.

 

CG: Tell us about your new novel, Mr, Glamour.

 

RG: Mr. Glamour is Hannibal Lecter in Gucci. Something dark is preying on the glitz of the glamour set. DCI Jackson Flare and Inspector Mandy Steele investigate a series of bizarre killings targeting the wealthy and glamorous. Cameras, designer labels, beautiful women and wealthy men fill the pages. The killer in Mr. Glamour knows all about design, he knows what brands mean to his victims. He is branding their skins. He is invading and destroying at will. And he has the police stumped.

 

Detective Inspector Flare and Inspector Steele try to catch a killer who has climbed inside their heads. As they investigate they step into a hall of mirrors and find themselves up against a wall of secrecy. The investigation drives Flare and Steele—who are themselves harbouring secrets—to acts of darkness. And the killer is watching everyone. In it I explore some of the areas we have been talking about, particularly narcissism and designer labels. Paul Brazill's called it a great London novel. It's receiving excellent reviews and is available here, among other places.

The Mustard Man Interview With Richard Godwin

Christopher Grant: Minus the use of human material, of course, how did the love of good food or cooking play a role in the genesis of The Mustard Man stories (if any)?


Richard Godwin: The host gives the meal. The parasite digests, he sits at the shoulder of the diners and watches their habits.

The Mustard Man is a mythology. He is a modern mythology of desire and need. As such the monopolies of homogenised food are part of the thematic materials that comprise the narratives. He is part and parcel of what we eat. He is also a character who will feed to you the thing you ought to eat and as such he goes beyond waiters and the catering industry which are a reflection of our own commercial narcissism and economic need.

CG: As I read Piquant, and I mentioned this to you, I began to see The Mustard Man as a hero. He doesn't target the everyman but rather those that hold themselves above the common person and the laws that the rest of us have to follow. Do you consider The Mustard Man a hero, an anti-hero, a force of nature, something else?


RG: The Mustard Man is all of these, he occupies the precise position in modern history where all terms lose their meaning and he injects them with renewed vigour. Heroism is a product of the political system it serves, and an anti hero is now subject to surveillance, those subverters of the order of things may be subject to the system they rebel against but a force of nature is that precisely because of his knowledge of his own destiny. The key here is the people the Mustard Man eviscerates with great gastronomy and there we have the food chain. Darwin posited an evolutionary model we inhabit as a paradigm that may be juxtaposed to those theories about what we need to survive propagated by the political systems we inhabit, the Mustard Man has been in all of these and is beyond them too, because his identity is part of an ongoing historical revolution that has always been here and always will be. He is the Saviour of Art and the Champion of Art. He is placing certain people back into the food chain.

CG: In Kentucky Ketchup, it is said that Jack Laretto has a new novel out called Pony Trip. You, of course, had a story about a deranged serial killing spirit by the same name. To intentionally get meta on you, is Pony Trip the novel Pony Trip the story leaking into the fictional stream now that The Mustard Man has re-seeded the space/time continuum?


RG: The Mustard Man works with herbs. He understands the nature of soil. The farm lay untenanted for months that passed with the slow resolution of some grim prophecy. Winter turned and settled a million leaves deep in the soil that acquired new fecundity from the mulch and insects that bred there.

CG: What is Julius Pharaoh in the whole thing? Is he is follower/recruiter or is just biding his time to usurp The Mustard Man's leadership? Or would that be telling?


RG: Julius Pharaoh is a product of the changes the Mustard Man makes in the space/time continuum. He is the prophet of a parallel position in time to the characters he meets.

CG: William S. Burroughs talked about good versus evil in terms of Johnsons and Shits. In the collection, The Mustard Man doesn't target your common man (or woman) and even goes out of his way to help one of these people. Instead, he targets those that Burroughs would have called Shits (the politicians, the reviewers of art that don't know what art is, et al). How much influence did Burroughs have on these stories (if any) and how much of it was your own distaste for the Shits amongst us?


RG: I like Burroughs's depiction of the Johnsons. There are certain people who like to stick their noses in but do nothing when needed. That is not the Johnsons. If Burroughs was an influence here he was not a conscious one. However the Mustard Man is a champion. Those who wish to impose a facile moral order based on their own prejudices are undoubtedly going to end up in the food mixture. If one has a palate it is impossible not for feel distaste for the Shits among us. The Shits who make moral judgements without due consideration.

Interview Two-Fer With Richard Godwin

Over the course of the last five months or so, I have conducted two interviews with Richard Godwin, author of thirty-six stories here at ATON and many more elsewhere, as well as two novels Apostle Rising and Mr. Glamour and a collection of short stories about everyone's favorite mover and shaker, The Mustard Man.

I hope you enjoy the wide range of topics discussed.

Interlude Stories: Kip Hanson

RIDING THE UNION PACIFIC - KIP HANSON

“C’mon, Johnny, run. Get up here, douchebag.”

Johnny sprinted after the westbound Union Pacific, stumbling over the small rocks and blackened scree bordering the tracks. The engine was a distant rumble ahead, rising in pitch, and Johnny knew he would soon be left behind; worse, he would be prone to terrific ridicule from his twin brother later that night. He tripped and nearly fell, but with a final gasping effort reached out to catch his brother’s hand. Charlie swung him up to the rail, clapping him on the back once his grip was secure. Together, they climbed to the top of the car.

Despite the heat of the Arizona sun overhead, the air blowing past was chill, and the boys sprawled out upon the roof of the container, glad for its metallic warmth and enjoying the delicious feel of the air streaming over their bodies. On the horizon, a monstrous serpent crept across the desert landscape - Interstate 10, stretching from Jacksonville, Florida to nearby LA. And there in the middle loomed the tunnel, a black, yawning hole bored through and under the long spine of desert rock on which the freeway ran.

As they neared the tunnel’s maw, the boys sat up in anticipation of its dreadful thrill - the mysterious graffitied walls running past, the dark and sooty concrete of the ceiling flying scant inches above their heads. If they were lucky, the eastbound train would come while they were still inside, making the cars rock and the tunnel black; the whistle would blow and the air compress around them until breath and sight and hearing was lost. It was terrifying and marvelous, and was what the boys yearned for above all else on this sunny December day.

On the bridge overhead, a highway patrol car sat on the shoulder of the Interstate. A man in uniform stood at the rail, waving at the boys, and they could just make out the sound of his voice yelling down at them. “Hellooo, below there! You boys, what the hell are you think…” and then he was past, drowned out by the sudden strident blare of the train’s whistle. Charlie grinned at his brother as they were swept into the tunnel, ducking their heads a split second before the transom whipped past.

The engine passed through the tunnel and out into the desert. As the locomotive approached the junction ahead, they heard the deep rumble of the engine idling down as the train slowed to pass through town. Charlie swung over the edge. Hanging from the rail, he ran alongside the steel wheels, matching the speed of the train exactly before leaping to the dusty shoulder below. He landed perfectly, then turned to jeer at his brother as he landed wrong and narrowly avoided cartwheeling into a stand of Cholla cactus.

Suddenly, a deep voice came from behind. “Alright, boys. You two, get on over here, right now!”

He turned to see a highway patrol car parked at the shoulder. The officer from the freeway overpass stood alongside, his hands planted squarely on his hips, his broad black moustache bristling forbiddingly. Charlie walked slowly over to the car and stopped before the officer to accept judgment, his brother trailing slightly behind him nursing a bruised elbow.

“I’m Officer Cummins. I saw you from the Interstate. Just what in the Sam Hill do you idiots think you’re doing?”

Charlie considered a wisecrack, but for once in his young life was prudent and kept his mouth shut. He hung his head, appropriately contrite, and said nothing.

“What are your names and where do you live?” he demanded.

Charlie looked up at the officer. “I’m Charles Hoffman, sir, and this is my brother, John. We live at Saguaro View Terrace.”

“Okay then, boys. Let’s go. Into the back of the car with the both of you. We’ll have us a little chat with your parents.”

They drove through town and into the development where the boys lived, pulling up before a neat two-story with tan stucco sides and a red-tiled roof above. A long row of struggling Texas Sage guarded the sidewalk. An attractive woman in her late thirties came to the door, looking furious, and began hollering before the boys were even out of the car. “What have you two gotten into now?” she yelled.

The patrolman herded the boys to the porch and stuck out his hand. “Hello, ma’am. I’m Officer Cummins. Are you Mrs. Hoffman?”

“Yes, Officer. What have these two scats done now?”

He removed his hat, reluctant now that he saw the punishment these two boys were facing, somewhat chagrined at his part in it. “Well, ma’am, it seems your boys like to ride the UP into town is all. I caught 'em jumping off near 4th Street, over by the mall. Other than that, they’ve been quite well-behaved.”

She looked skeptical, but despite her anger was a bit charmed by this tall man with his dark eyes and handsome face. “I doubt that, Officer Cummins, but thank you for returning them to me. I’ll make sure their father deals with them accordingly. Get upstairs, young men, right now! And thank you again, Officer. Hopefully we won’t be seeing you again anytime soon. Have a good day, sir.” Before she could say another word, the boys fled through the foyer, into the living room, past the Christmas tree, and up the stairs to the relative safety of their bedroom, with Turk the black Lab barking at their heels.

Later that evening, they heard the dreaded footsteps of their father ascending the stairs. Johnny looked over at his brother. “It was your idea, Charlie.”

“That’s bullshit, John-O, and you know it.”

“You’re a jerk.”

“And you’re an ass…” Just then the door opened. Their father came in, looking tired, and sat on the bed. “Alright, which of you two cares to explain?”

“Well, Pop, it’s like this. Charlie thought it would be fun to…”

“You shut up, Johnny. You’re not putting this one on me, you doof…”

Their father raised his hands, “Okay, both of you stop it, right now. I don’t want to hear it.” Sensing the man’s distress, Turk came over and nuzzled his palm. “You’re a good boy,” he said, and scratched the dog behind the ears. He looked at Charlie. “Now, no more of your nonsense. Just tell me what happened.”

Charlie explained to their father how, earlier that summer, they’d noticed how the trains slowed as they passed by the development, and that in school they’d read a book about hobos. On a dare, they’d decided to jump on. “It’s boring around here, Pop. Ever since you moved us out here ...”

He raised his hand. “We’re not starting that discussion again. I already told you, I had no other choice.”

“Sorry, Pop. It’s just…it’s fun to sit on top of the train cars, and to ride into town and walk around the mall and stuff. And Johnny, he has a girlfriend that works at the 7-11 there and he…”

“I do not!”

Their father grinned. “Okay, boys. Enough of this. What you did was stupid and dangerous. You could have been killed. I’m grounding you both to the house for one week.”

The boys were stunned. “But, Pop. It’s Christmas vacation! That’s not fair.”

“This is your own fault, boys. You knew better. Any more complaints and we’ll make it two.”
                     
They made it three days. On Wednesday morning after their twenty-second game of Halo, Charlie threw down his controller. “Let’s go see the Bleak-Man.”

“No, we can’t. You’re going to get us in trouble, stupid.”

“So what? C’mon, you girl, they’ll never know. Let’s go. Just for a little while, okay?”

*

“Hey, Gus. What’s going on?”

“Nothing. What are you guys up to? I thought your old man grounded you?”

Charlie slapped their friend Augustus Bleak on the back and said, “Yeah, well, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him, right, Gus?”

“Yeah, sure. So what do you guys want to do? I’m bored out of my skull.”

At that moment, they heard the distant wail of the Union Pacific. Charlie grinned. “I’ve got an idea. Go get your jacket, Gus.”

The train was already moving at a good clip by the time they reached the crossing at the edge of the development. Charlie was the first on board, and reached down for a handful of Gus’s baseball jacket while Johnny shoved from behind. It was Gus’s first time on the train. Johnny jumped on behind him and swung up to the rail just before the gravel shoulder gave way to desert scrub. “Good fun, eh’, Bleak?”

As they reached the top of the car, they sat down in a semi-circle near the back. Gus smiled nervously. Charlie pointed to the tunnel, still a mile or so distant. “Now, don’t freak out when we get there. It looks tight, and you have to keep your stupid head down, but I’m telling you there’s room, okay? We’ve done it a million times.”

Gus snugged his Diamondbacks cap down around his head. He looked doubtful, but nodded in agreement. “Sure, Chuck. No problem.”

As they approached the mouth of the tunnel, Gus was increasingly apprehensive.

“You sure there’s room, guys?”

“Yeah, it’s cool. Just chill out, Gus. It’s okay.”

Gus began to sidle towards the edge, glancing anxiously between the darkness of the tunnel ahead and the ground speeding past below. “Jesus, you guys, I don’t know if I can do this.”

At that moment, they saw the bright headlight of the eastbound train, coming their way. The dim light of the tunnel was eclipsed and Charlie hooted in anticipation. Suddenly, Gus turned white with terror and grabbed for the rail. Johnny screamed at him, “No, Gus, don’t!” and reached for his legs as Gus slid face-first off the trailing end of the car. His baseball cap sailed high into the air.

Johnny yelled out, “Help me, Charlie. I can’t hold him.” Charlie leaped up and ran to his brother, heaving at Gus’s pants leg. He snagged the hood of Johnny’s sweatshirt, and saw Gus hanging upside down between the cars, dangling over the coupling. “Hold on, Gus, we got you, ” he yelled, but started to lose his grip on his brother’s gray sweatshirt. He grabbed at Johnny’s shoulders, struggling to pull their friend to safety, but it was no good. He was going to lose them both. With a tremendous effort, he seized his brother under the armpits, heaving him up and backwards. Johnny stumbled, but managed to wrap his arms around Gus’s legs and had dragged him most of the way back onto the train when the sun-warmed eastern wall of the overpass struck Charlie from behind at thirty miles per hour.

Charlie woke to see the kind face of Officer Cummins, kneeling over him. “It’s okay, boy. I’ve got you. You just hang on now. Help is coming.”

“Where’s Johnny?”

A momentary shadow passed over Officer Cummins’s dark eyes. “Don’t you worry about it, Charlie. Everything will be alright. You rest now.” Charlie closed his eyes.

Charlie climbed into the backseat of the family car, his mother in the passenger seat, his father behind the wheel. They drove through town, avoiding the Interstate, and arrived fifteen minutes later at the church. His father held his mother by the arm and led her inside. Her eyes were dry and glassy-looking. The caskets stood at the front of the church on gleaming metal platforms, and were covered in a soft, lavender-colored fabric. They had a vague floral pattern and looked soft and pleasant to the touch – Charlie wanted to rub his hand across it, to see how it felt.

His mother gave out a small gasp behind him, almost a hiccupping sound, and he turned to see his father lifting her from behind by the elbows, sort of carting her down the aisle on her heels and into the pew to the right of the lavender caskets. The church was filled with whispering. Charlie looked about at his friends and neighbors and then across the aisle to Gus’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Bleak, weeping quietly beside the casket of their only son.

From the pew behind, there was Mrs. Berlanzer, offering his parents a brave smile; her husband reached across and clasped Charlie’s father on the shoulder. The Jensen family from two doors down was there across the aisle. Officer Cummins sat in his dress uniform three pews back. And in the back of the church, off to the right, two boys sat near the door, staring at Charlie. The one closest to him was dressed in a gray sweatshirt with the hood pulled up over his head; the other wore a baseball jacket and cap, snugged down low. His eyes glittered in the dim candlelight.

Charlie turned away, glancing again at the caskets only a few feet distant, and wondered what the boys looked like in there, and whether they’d been mangled by their passage beneath the train. It was rumored that Gus had been cut in half by the wheels. He considered for a moment that maybe, just maybe, Gus and Johnny were not really inside at all, that this was a joke, some kind of terrible mistake. But no – he turned again to look at the boys sitting in back, and knew the truth.

The minister entered the church and passed to the altar. After a moment of silence, he began. “Dear friends, we gather today to mourn the passing of two fine young men. We gather so that we may remember them, and praise them, and commend them into the loving arms of…” At that moment, Charlie’s mother shrieked and fell to the aisle, reaching out to the altar, sobbing uncontrollably. His father picked her up and carried her outside. Charlie followed. As they passed, his friends and neighbors watched in silence, grim-faced and sympathetic. Officer Cummins stood with tears in his eyes.

Charlie pushed through the double-doors and passed into the warm sunlight outside. He held the door for a moment, to take a final look at the people he left behind, at the caskets on their gleaming stands, at Officer Cummins standing grief-struck. And as he let the door swing shut, he realized that the boys who’d been sitting in the last pew were gone.

That night, he sat in the living room, alone with his parents. The TV sat flickering, unwatched and silent. Every few minutes his mother would weep quietly, helplessly. His Pop stared out the window, the drink at his elbow untouched. After a while, Charlie could stand no more; he said goodnight and went up to his room. As he reached the top of the stairs, he turned and called for Turk, but the dog sat whining at the bottom and refused to come. After a few tries, Charlie gave up and walked the short hallway to his room. As he opened the door, he groaned quietly in terror.

Johnny sat on the bed, his gray sweatshirt pulled over his head. The lower half of his face was stove in, his left arm swung loosely from a flattened shoulder. Gus sat opposite him on Johnny’s old bed, his baseball jacket split neatly across the chest from shoulder to hip, the two halves of his body leaning awkwardly against one another. He reached up to adjust his baseball cap, and smiled at Charlie standing in the doorway. As Charlie watched, Johnny stood on wrecked knees and shuffled across the room to embrace his brother.

“What…no. Johnny? What are you doing here? What…oh, no. Johnny!” He fell to his knees, sobbing. Johnny reached down to comfort his brother, lifted him up and carried him over to the bed and set him on the covers. A small noise came from the doorway, and Johnny turned to see his father standing there, Turk huddling at his side. The dog barked once, then tucked his tail between his legs and bolted down the hall. Their father stared after him for a moment, then reached in, turned off the light and closed the door to the bedroom. “Goodnight,” he said.

That night, Charlie dreamed of the boys. Johnny and Gus were running down the gleaming metal length of the tracks, small stones and gravel flying from their shoes as they fled. They were beautifully untouched, had not yet been crushed by the Union Pacific, had strength and breath and life left before them. And they were terrified. Behind them came the shrill whistle of the locomotive, bearing down on them, and they ran and they ran but still they weren’t fast enough. As they neared the tunnel, a toothless black mouth in the side of the Interstate, Gus tripped and fell and was instantly swallowed up by the churning steel wheels, his body dissolving into nothing more than a pink mist, floating on the desert air.

Johnny dared to look back, and over his shoulder saw Charlie at the controls of the locomotive, Gus standing alongside, a victorious grin stretched across his skeletal face. With one final blast of the whistle, Johnny fell beneath the wheels and was gone.

Charlie woke to the lonely sound of the train somewhere in the distance, and passed again into a fitful sleep.

The next morning, Charlie came down for breakfast. He walked into the kitchen to see his mother at the table, a bowl of cereal untouched before her, the carton of milk sitting warm at her elbow. “Mom, you need to eat,” he said, but before she could reply, Turk jumped from beneath the table and began to howl, a fearful baying which echoed off the walls and ceiling. Charlie’s mother started to shriek incoherently at the dog, “Stop it, oh please stop, you bastard!” His father rushed in, grabbed her by the arms and shook her gently until she fell to the chair crying. As his Pop opened the door to shoo the dog outside, Charlie saw Gus standing on the patio, peering in through the window. His baseball cap was perched jauntily on his head, and a silly grin sat on his ruined face. Through the open door, he saw his brother in the yard, waving for him to come outside. Charlie moaned in terror.

Later that day, his mother slept upstairs in her room. His father had left for work hours before. Charlie lay in his bed, but was finally unable to bear any longer the room he had once shared with his brother and came downstairs. As he passed through the living room, he saw the Christmas tree there, the gifts lying unopened, the tree weeping needles like brown tears. His brother huddled on the floor to one side of the tree, a small package in his hands. He looked up at Charlie with a look of terrible grief in his eyes, and motioned for him to come to him.

“Oh, Johnny, don’t do this to me. Why are you here? Why do you stay?” Charlie advanced on his brother, angry now. “Johnny, you’re dead!” he shouted. “You have to leave.” Johnny grimaced, but again motioned for Charlie to come over. And so Charlie came, and sat cross-legged on the floor opposite his dead brother. With trembling hands, he took the gift and opened it.

Within he found a small replica train whistle, on its side an image of a steam locomotive, engraved in beautiful detail. His breath caught, and a single tear fell on the train. As Charlie looked to his brother for answers, Johnny nodded mutely that he should try it. He raised the whistle to his lips and blew, sounding a terrific blast. Upstairs, his mother screamed in her sleep. But in the distance, Charlie heard the answering whistle of the Union Pacific, and suddenly knew what he must do.

Charlie walked along the tracks, listening for the train. He knew it wouldn’t be long now. The day was sunny and warm - he thought about his parents, and poor lost Johnny, the way Gus pulled his hat down low. As he approached the tunnel where his brother had died, he saw Office Cummins there, kneeling at the foot of a small wooden cross erected along the shoulder of the tracks. It was painted a glossy white with black lettering. Officer Cummins was weeping, “Oh, you boys. I’m so sorry. If only I could have stopped you. Good Lord, why? Why did you have to take these poor, dear boys?”

Charlie stopped behind the officer, reached out to touch his shoulder. “It’s okay, Officer Cummins. I’m sorry. You did the best you could. It was my fault. Everything is my fault.”

As Charlie’s hand fell upon the officer’s shoulder, a shudder ran through him and he spun around, a terrific look of fear on his face.  He jumped to his feet. “Oh, Charlie. You scared the hell out of me. What are you doing here, son?”

“I needed to come, Officer Cummins. There’s something I have to do here.”

The patrolman, cautious now, looked down at Charlie. “What do you mean, boy? Are you okay?”

“Oh yes. Yes. I’ll be fine, sir.” He held up the whistle. “I just need to put this here, to…to remember Johnny and Gus.”

Officer Cummins glanced at the whistle in his hands. “Do you need a ride home, son?”

“No, sir, I can walk.” He hesitated. “And, sir? Thanks for taking care of me, after the accident.”

“You’re welcome, Charlie.”

Charlie watched as Officer Cummins climbed up the hill and back to his car waiting on the shoulder of the Interstate. As the car pulled away, Charlie turned to see Johnny and Gus standing next to him. “Okay, guys. I get it,” he said, and placed the whistle at the base of the cross. With the lonely sound of the Union Pacific coming down the tracks, he took the hands of his brother and friend, and sat on the tracks to wait.

BIO: Kip lives in Tucson, where he wastes time blogging about unimportant things at http://misterass.com. He writes to keep the flying monkeys away.

Interlude Stories: Richard Godwin

MEMORY LOSS - RICHARD GODWIN

Chicago. It’s winter. I’m losing my memory. The alliance will move me on soon.

Cars are frozen solid, women scurry by the blocks of iced metal, hiding their skins from the cold. Skin has a price. Even yours.

I’m opposite Millennium Park and I ask myself what I’m doing here. There are no answers in the bottles of Jim Beam and Twinkie wrappers that litter the apartment. I pull down my eyelids and stare at my face in the tarnished mirror. You never know where your next job is coming from.

Every time I think of the alliance I see cakes, endless galleries of cup cakes, chocolate gateaux, éclairs and Victoria sponges spurting cream into the sunken jaws of vagrants. I salivate in this comatose virtual realm at the images paraded before me like some sick twisted little sadistic film. I consider that I am a vagrant, an actor in a film with no script. I have to leave the studio. Survival never respects the law.

I’m stepping out of the shower when the door buzzes. Frankie’s standing there with his briefcase. He walks in, sits down, slings a cowboy boot over his Wrangler jeans, and pops a strawberry Zinger in his mouth.

‘So, Harry, ready for the next one?’

He slides a picture of a fat man eating a lollipop across the stained coffee table. It has the usual details on the back, address, schedule of target’s movements.

‘Usual payment?’ I say.

Frankie nods.

‘Bake him. Then we’re moving you to another city.’

‘Where this time?’

‘Does it matter?’

It doesn’t. It doesn’t matter where I am because the life’s the same, except I’m losing myself. ‘How did I get here?’ I say.

‘You don’t want to know that, Harry.’ He leans forward. There is ice on his tongue. ‘We want you this way.’

I watch him on the street down below as he walks to his car, a small man with small ideas, and I get ready.

The reel of my memory is faded, the world is sepia.

*

It’s an easy hit. Fatso’s in the shower when I get inside his house, I can hear him singing Leonard Cohen’s Famous Blue Rain Coat. He’s croaking, ‘What can I tell you my brother my killer,’ when he stops and gasps like a virgin as he sees me there in my black leather gloves. I say, ‘Bye, baby,’ and spread his head over his nice white tiles. Problem is there’s a half-naked blonde in a G-string in the hallway, who screams and covers her large breasts as I run my eyes down her full figure. Pity to miss a fuck but I pop her too. She looks good enough to eat and I’m hungry as I head out of there. I stop on North Sheffield Avenue at the DMK Burger Bar.

The only beer they’ve got is Heineken and that’s when it hits me. Memory shudders briefly into being. I’m sitting at a bar in Detroit drinking Heineken when Frankie’s boys come in. They blackjack me in the john with my dick in my hand. One minute I’m pissing, next thing I’m lying in a white room listening to Mantovani. A pretty nurse comes in and checks my pulse. I’m aware of something solid in my head, a small hard thing at my temple. It’s a blur of pills and hotels after that.

It’s called the sponge filling. When a gun gets to know too much they control his brain, spooky but true. Soon he’s put in a cake and shipped out to the diners. This job’ll eat you alive.

*

Back at the apartment I open my temple with a scalpel. I cut just deep enough into the side of my head and peel back two inches of skin, removing the chip, which I put in my pocket. I stitch myself up, and put on my hat. Then I pack and head downstairs to the Lincoln waiting to take me to the next city.

The two bozos in the front yap about football as they take the detour. I shoot them at a junction and get a taxi to the airport, calling Frankie from my cell.

‘Think you could do away with me? I’m going freelance.’

‘Good job we have a code. Await your next instructions,’ he says.

Soon I see Bessie Coleman Drive and I taste freedom. It tastes of salt. I move like a shadow through the crowds. I ditch my Glock in a trash can.

As I’m booking my ticket, I feel a hand on my shoulder and a cop asks me to come with him and his colleague. I’ll show them the pictures, I’ll tell them about the alliance. I’ll work for them.

The cop smiles.

‘Do you like cup cakes?’ he says.

BIO: Richard Godwin is the author of crime novels Mr. Glamour  and Apostle Rising and is a widely published crime and horror writer.


Mr. Glamour is his second novel and is out now and is available online at Amazon  and at all good retailers. Mr. Glamour is Hannibal Lecter in Gucci. It is about a glamorous world with a predator in its midst and has received great reviews. Pulp Metal Fiction recently published Piquant, Tales Of The Mustard Man, his culinary genius. His Chin Wags At The Slaughterhouse are interviews he has conducted with writers and can be found at his blog.


You can also find a full list of his works on his website.


He lectured in English and American literature at London University before becoming a professional writer.

Interlude Stories: Dot King

NIGHT CALL 3: GINNY - DOT KING

She hadn’t meant to. At least not yet.

The minute Ginny saw the neat bedsit with its square skylight over the bed and its long, narrow window looking out from the kitchenette over the grey-blue roofs of the town, she felt that this was, at last, a place where she could stay awhile. A place where she could be normal.

And now he’d spoiled it. She hadn’t even moved in and she’d had to get him ready and it was over before it had begun. He shouldn’t have laughed at her like that. Like they all did.

She was always hungry afterwards and now she was tapping stubby, sticky fingers around a small, white china plate, dipping up the last crumbs from the slice of cold pizza and some fruit cake she’d found in the fridge.

She thought of Rob in his armchair, in her head she heard again his endless prattle. The worst was when he’d laughed at her, in front of that woman and the other girl. That wouldn’t do. It wasn’t normal. Even if they had all laughed at her. But he wouldn't laugh at her again. Rob was ready.

The thought of his readiness aroused her. First hungry, then sexy. Time for the dancing. She only danced these days once they were ready. She had to be careful because if they weren’t ready, they laughed. They didn’t understand that it wasn’t normal to laugh, especially at the dancing. They coaxed, goaded her into dancing, made her, then laughed and it got her mad. She practised so hard to get the movements just right, practised in front of her mirror, so that wasn’t why. It was because they weren’t ready. So now, Ginny got them ready, stubbornly holding back her dancing until they were quite ready.

The familiar dark swamp of desire sucking at the pit of her stomach, Ginny strode back into the lounge where Rob sat facing the space she’d created in the centre of the room. Her dance-floor. His head had lolled forward, his chin resting on his chest. Blood, run down from the neat, single slash in his neck, was drying on his shirt. He should to be looking at her. He should see her dance. She’d got him ready. She tipped his head up, but it only drooped again. She was disappointed. Things weren’t quite right this time.

She placed herself seductively in the middle of the dance-floor, plump hands with sausage-like fingers on vast, fleshy hips, one projecting to the side as if in mid-sashay. She was close enough to reach out and touch him. She switched on the music in her head.

« Desafinado »

She didn’t know the lyrics and wasn’t sure of the tune, but she liked the word.

« Desafinado ». Sexy word. On the first syllable she brought her flabby arm in an arc over her head and pointed a provocative, pudgy finger at Rob’s slumped body, as if choosing the lucky winner of a lazy, sexy lap dance. « Desafinado ».

Swaying, she drew her hands up the sides of her ribcage and breasts and pushed them into the air above her head. No-one laughed. It was going well. She brought her hands down, left to the right hand seam of her tee shirt, right to the other side, ready to peel it off, leaned forward and wagged her ample breasts where Rob’s face should have been, then gazing at the top of his head, dipped hers, lowered her eyes as if demurely.... and ..... stopped .... « Desafinado » shrieked, ended with a DJ scratch ....

Blinked. What the fuck is that? On the floor? The fucking phone! Shit! Shit! Who did he call? Shit! Shit! Shit! Ginny grabbed the phone where it lay by Rob’s feet. Punched the redial keys. Nothing. The battery was dead. Who? Fucking who? Might be here any time ... Shit!

Panicked, she hauled her bag to her shoulder and fled. Where? Where?

*

On the square, the light from all-night laundrette cast a reluctant glow on to the pavement. Clutching her bag to her to cover her blood-splashed tee shirt and jeans, Ginny ran inside. The man at the desk barely looked up, « A’right, love? »

« Yeah, OK ».

She hurried to the machine farthest from the door, squashed herself into the shadow beyond it, changed her soiled clothes and trainers for the clean ones in her bag and shoved the lot into the machine. Dropped in a coin. Slammed the start button. Subsided heavily on to a chair. Watched as her things began turning in pinkish-grey water.

Gradually, hypnotised by the steady thrum-swish of the washer, she felt calm enough to take stock. He’d been ready; hadn’t he? At least she’d thought so. All that was right. It was the phone that bothered her. Shit-shit! She couldn’t remember if it had been there before. Who had he called? What had he said? She took comfort in the thought that he’d been ready, she’d seen to that, she had to be careful and she was, so he hadn’t phoned anybody.

So... OK... Now... Where had she been up to? She was dancing, so she must have been sexy. But it wasn’t over. That wasn’t normal. It had to be over. It could never be normal if it wasn’t over. She looked around.

She knew it wasn’t right, not ever, to touch herself in the toilet. Touching like that was only all right if she was dancing. But what choice did she have? None, that’s what. None.

She locked herself into the dim, narrow cubicle. It was too cramped to dance in there and she wondered whether she should stand or sit and couldn’t decide.

For a while her fingers scraped dry flesh. She didn’t like it. It hurt. Not like when she was dancing. But it had to be over. She closed her eyes, pictured Rob, ready. Then a few more of them. Then it began to be nice, especially with her eyes closed and them all watching her, ready....

At last elusive waves of pleasure came rolling through her. Timidly at first. Then rolling, lurching, unrelenting. The ultimate, long-awaited dam-wave curled itself perversely over and around all of them, gyrating on and on, on and on, each wave its own small turbulence of craving, pitching, roaring ... then ...

... recoiled abruptly, sucked into a churning, convulsing maelstrom of shame and humiliation. And they were all laughing. And Ginny saw this. And heard it. And felt the arid, bitter rasp of failure.

*

Oh, this wouldn’t do. Wouldn’t do at all. This wasn’t right. Wasn’t right at all. This was far from right. It wasn’t over.

This...Was...Not...Normal...

In the drab, yellow pallor of the cubicle, Ginny opened peevish eyes.