Replay: "One Hundred And Twenty-Five Grams Of Pain"

Oh, the woe of a drug dealer. Such an accursed trade, and such an abysmal life. Here is his lament, in the (almost micro) story called "125 Grams of Pain." This tale was posted on Flashing In The Gutters.

As to what the dosage alludes to, you'll have to read for yourself.

Best Of: "Beef Wellington, It's What's For Dinner"

Note: once upon a time, there was a man among men. He championed crime flash fiction better than any, but some alleged knucklehead, allegedly brought that to a close, by allegedly...well, just Google "Flashing In The Gutters" and I'm sure you can find out just what occurred. It is still murky to me and I witnessed it (on the Internet) firsthand.

At any rate, that man is still very much with us and cats like Aldo Calcagno, Christopher Grant, and Col Bury are keeping the tradition of the man called "Tribe," going on strong. Mind you, there are plenty of great crime fiction sites, but these guys follow Tribe's tradition of crime flash fiction for the people, by the people.

As long as you follow the criteria of each site and you don't bring the weak stuff, you are in. No hoops to jump and no oddly distant rejection letters that make you wonder if the editor even read your story at all. Here is "Beef Wellington, It's What's For Dinner" and you even get the little side note/coda that I attached back in February 22, 2007-


They say that a man who defends himself in court has a fool for a client. So one of these fools told me that the law says that you have the right to be tried by a jury of your peers. Of course, the same fool had pizza for his last meal so that shows you where his head was at.

“Peers.” Ha, that’s a good one. If they’re my peers, then I’m an innocent man. Hold on, maybe I misspoke. I’m not claiming to be innocent…I’m just saying that I wasn’t guilty of this crime. Each of the two times that I’ve had to face the twelve people sitting to the right of the judge, I’ve never seen a familiar face.

By familiar, I mean someone who has even remotely looked like they’ve experienced even a fraction of the things I’ve experienced. They are not my peers. My peers know what I’ve gone through. My peers would’ve known right away that everything I’ve done, I did to someone else before they could do it to me.

By familiar, I mean someone who has had to risk their life to just to go to the store. Someone who has been shot at, just because some joke of a man was high and thought that I looked at him funny. Someone who has given his best friend a roof over his head and food, only to have that friend try and kill him over fifty dollars that wasn’t his to begin with.

So like I said, I’m not innocent, I just didn’t commit this crime. But the things I’ve done in life, who would believe me? I’m not even sure that I’d believe me if I sat in that jury box. I know I thought my real peers would understand, but let me contradict myself again. Who were my fake peers to judge me? Walk a mile in my shoes and you’d cut off your own feet.

Still, I’m not bitter…though I’m not exactly resigned to my fate either. I just know that it is my time…they’re going to get me one way or the other. My appeals are as exhausted as my spirit. I’m out of options, but I guess the one thing that I can do is to fuck them up for my last meal.

I want some of that beef Wellington that I’ve always heard about and some lobster, fuck that pizza crap.

The End

Note: This story relates to my fascination with the last meals of death row inmates. Invariably, they tend to choose comfort food or the food that they miss the most from outside of the prison walls. So I always have wondered why haven't I read about someone who wanted something just a little more eloborate before the chemical drip.

I would've elaborated more, but Tribe set a 500 word limit.

Best Of: "Same Circus, Different Town"

Well, spring is finally here and as I promised, "Best Of" has returned. Today's selection was from the good old Tribe days. Tribe is an author out of Ohio and he used to have crime flash fiction site that was the precursor to Powder Burn Flash.

It was just like Powder Burn in that you had fine crime fiction and undiscovered writers, and we are very fortunate that Aldo Calcagno decided to pick upcarry that torch and carry it onward. Still, I'd like to thank Tribe for providing the first true venue where every writer was on equal footing and he or she could stand on their own merit.

The odd thing about this story's title was I asked a German native/American citizen coworker how he was doing and instead of the standard, "another day, another sixty-two cents after taxes," or "same sh*t, different day" that had become standard at my job, he responded with the phrase that would become this story's title. As a matter of fact, I had to disguise the lightbulb that went off over my head, because I knew right then and there that I had to build a story around this right away. When lunch came around, I jotted some notes on a paper towel.

In wake of the current financial scandals, "Same Circus" has taken on a different light and some of the narrator's words ring truer than ever. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you "Same Circus, Different Town."

"Onehundred And Twenty-five Grams Of Pain"

One hundred and twenty-five grains of potassium nitrate, charcoal and sulfur...one hundred and twenty-five grains of pain. Twelve in the clip and one in the chamber, my “lucky thirteen.”

One time while I was counting my money, I turned down a panhandling junkie asking for a dollar and he keyed my car. There’s a bullet for him if we ever cross paths again. As a matter of fact, I have a bullet for everybody.

Mad Dog acts as stupid as his nickname by coming up wrong on the money he gives me at the end of the week. He’ll get a bullet as an example of how I conduct business.

Every time I come home for lunch, Yuri’s on my couch. He drinks my beer and sniffs around my woman. I got a bullet for each transgression.

Cash wants to push my territory all the way back to the police station, and I kiss the top four bullets before I leave home so that when I do catch up with him, I’ll send him off just right.

And don’t think for a second that I’m going to let that asshole keep parking in front of my driveway: I pay way too much to let that go on.

Because that’s how we settle things around here and it’s been that way as long as I can remember. I’d like to fight things out, but the strongest and fastest fists in the world can’t travel almost a thousand feet per second. So the first cat might get one punch in, but it more often than not will be his last.

Yeah, I got a bullet for just about everyone, but someone had two bullets for me. So I’ll just have to take care of my affairs in the next life.

Note: The title pertains to amount of gunpowder in some 9mm bullets and because I had problems meeting the word count limit with my previous submissions to Flashing in The Gutters, this was more haiku than short story, in terms of length.

"Beef Wellington, It's What's For Dinner"

They say that a man who defends himself in court has a fool for a client. So one of these fools told me that the law says that you have the right to be tried by a jury of your peers. Of course, the same fool had pizza for his last meal so that shows you where his head was at.

“Peers.” Ha, that’s a good one. If they’re my peers, then I’m an innocent man. Hold on, maybe I misspoke. I’m not claiming to be innocent…I’m just saying that I wasn’t guilty of this crime. Each of the two times that I’ve had to face the twelve people sitting to the right of the judge, I’ve never seen a familiar face.

By familiar, I mean someone who has even remotely looked like they’ve experienced even a fraction of the things I’ve experienced. They are not my peers. My peers know what I’ve gone through. My peers would’ve known right away that everything I’ve done, I did to someone else before they could do it to me.

By familiar, I mean someone who has had to risk their life to just to go to the store. Someone who has been shot at just because some joke of a man was high and thought that I looked at him funny. Someone who has given his best friend a roof over his head and food, only to have that friend try and kill him over fifty dollars that wasn’t his to begin with.

So like I said, I’m not innocent, I just didn’t commit this crime. But the things I’ve done in life, who would believe me? I’m not even sure that I’d believe me if I sat in that jury box. I know I thought my real peers would understand, but let me contradict myself again. Who were my fake peers to judge me? Walk a mile in my shoes and you’d cut off your own feet.

Still, I’m not bitter…though I’m not exactly resigned to my fate either. I just know that it is my time…they’re going to get me one way or the other. My appeals are as exhausted as my spirit. I’m out of options, but I guess the one thing that I can do is to fuck them up for my last meal.

I want some of that beef Wellington that I’ve always heard about and some lobster, fuck that pizza crap.


Note: This relates to my fascination with the last meals of death row inmates. Invariably, they tend to choose comfort food or the food that they miss the most from outside of the prison walls. So I always have wondered why haven't I read about someone who wanted something just a little more eloborate.

"Same Circus, Different Town"

I cannot and will not eat with him at a restaurant, so I go over to his house every Saturday for lunch.

“How are you?” he asks me through the newspaper. Even if he wasn’t reading it, he wouldn’t pay any attention to me. I’m a huge disappointment to him, I didn’t go into the family business nor did I show a predilection for settling matters with violence the way he and the three generations of our family did before me.

“Same shit, different day…Papa.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Same circus, different town.”

“Nnn-yeah.”

“Papa? How much goat, would a Croat boat, if a Croat could float some goats?”

“Yeah, you’re right champ. I would’ve done the same thing.”

I’d feign something about his mistress giving me a yet-to-be-discovered STD, but then he would actually have to pay attention to me and neither one of us want that. I’ll talk and he won’t listen, then he’ll babble on about his dealings and I won’t listen because I never, ever, want to know where the bodies are buried.

If the Feds ever did subpoena me I would just tell them the truth: I’ve always ignored him in the same way that a man that’s been married for fifty years, tunes his wife out.

“What are we having?”

“Pork in red gravy on top of penne. I‘ve just got to boil the water.”

I hate it when he snaps the paper like that. It’s not “gravy,” but “sauce.” It’s “sugo” in Italian but that word can translate as either “sauce” or as “gravy.” When I was ten and had dinner at the Irish kid’s next door, he said I was retarded because I called it “gravy.” “Gravy is brown, white or tan, you moron!”

I don’t know why he puts me through this every week, yet here we are. We are cat and dog, lion and hyena, Israel and Palestine, Giuliani and Gotti.

Vincent “The Chin” Gigante faked his loss of sanity, Papa never had any sanity to lose. I’ve always known this and I suspect that his associates have finally have figured this out, too. So that’s why I won’t eat with him in a restaurant, or sit with him in a barbershop or in traffic.

If he ever did listen to me, he would have found out that I’ve made twice the money that he ever has in one-tenth of the time, without having to hurt, maim or kill anyone. As the pen is mightier than the sword, a computer and a ledger will always get you more money than any gun ever will.

Maybe that’s something for him to consider, when all the red gravy has poured out of him on his way to being another obituary.



Note: Yes it's true, sugo can translate into either "sauce" or "gravy." Vice-versa? Sauce can be "sugo" or "salsa" in Italian.

"Forty Winks With Luci"

Insomnia? Not only did I write the book on it, but the sequel, the prequel and all related essays. I’ve gone as many as fifty hours between sleep and functioned as good or better than most. Or at worst, just like someone that has a coupla stiff drinks in him.

Or let me put it this way, sleep to me is like food to a shark. I have something in me that helps me do without and when I do come across it? I devour it until I get my fill. But like an over-fished, polluted ocean, it hasn’t come to me and I can’t remember the last time I’ve fed.

You see, as many people as I’ve had to put to sleep in my profession, you learn to deal without guilt or sleep…or it eats you alive.

It’s kind of strange though. I don’t remember moving into this apartment or exactly how I got here. It seems like it’s 8:30 PM in the summer all the time and like the sun just can’t quite figure out which way is down. Whether I’m in bed, on the couch or even on the floor, the light in the place always keeps me up.

When I somehow manage to shake off the light, some kid drives by with one of those car stereos that make your windows rattle and he parks right in front of the building. I have a brick with his name on it, but he always manages to drive off just as I open the front door or a window.

When he’s not at it, the neighbors will get into a screaming match or play their stereo too damn loud and it’s always a song that I couldn’t stand the first hundred times I heard it. Then there’s these idiot construction workers…they’re always digging up my sidewalk for a project that they’re in no hurry to finish.

I confronted one of them today and asked him, when are they going to get done? He replied, “ask Luci.” Then I went to the foreman of the crew, to try and make peace and alls he said was “talk to Luci.” What the hell? Who do I have to kill to get just one hour of sleep? The whole work crew?

So as I just came back down my hallway, I caught one of the neighbor’s kids bouncing a baseball off my door. I grabbed the little snot by the arm and asked him what the devil he was doing. He gave a smirk to rival Rick the Rat and said “chat it up with Luci.”

“Luci who?”

“Down in the basement, you‘ll know.”

So I drop him like a bad habit and it’s down the stairs to settle this because I‘m not paying tribute. Funny, the basement seems further down than I figured it should be, like someone’s added six more flights of stairs.

When I get down there, I don’t like what I see it all. I have to chalk it up to my insomnia or I’m going to lose it. Everyone that I’ve wasted, put to sleep and a few that I was never sure that I was successful with, they’re all playing cards.

The room’s painted bright red and it’s cold as a witch’s down here. There‘s twenty people at six tables, they’re looking slightly pale, but too damn good to be fish food and skeletons.

And can you believe this shit? They’re all ignoring me. I guess it’s just as well because my sanity is about to burst right out of my skull. Way at the back table, my very first hit, Dante Fieri nods at me. I nod back and walk toward him.

I know, I’ve finally got some sleep and I’m having a nightmare, that‘s it. As I walk, I look down and instead of playing cards, everyone’s using them damn Tarot cards.

“You wanted to see me?”

“No, why would I, Dante?”

“No, you’ve got it wrong…I’m not Dante.”

“The hell you’re not! I put you down myself!”

“Huh, wrong. I got tired of that fire and brimstone shit. Please to meet you, the name’s Lucifer.”



Note: This was my first submission to "Flashing In The Gutters" and it was originally titled, "Twenty Winks With Luci." Why? Hell, I can't remember what I had for lunch two days ago.

I do remember that the local gas company had been tearing up the streets and sidewalks around my house for almost twenty-three months in a row. This in itself is not bad, until you consider that I am a night owl and I have worked the graveyard shift for almost half of my life.

So to get through my insomnia, I tried to deal with it through humor, then I dealt with it through this story.