"Miami, 6 AM"

“Est-ceci un coyllar?”

“Mais, oui.”

Babette, she’s so knowledgeable…I knew that there was something special about her. Maybe we will have to get to know each other, and hopefully sooner than later. Yes, it’s a coyllar like the one that was used by Charles VIIth.

When you throw a party, you should make sure that your guests are well fed, entertained and that they will want to come back for the next soiree that you throw. Not to mention, you should give them something that they will talk about long after the event.

Me? No “Wh*te Party” like Sean, I won’t tell invitees what they can and cannot wear. I won’t do “black-tie only” like the Carquinezes, no one wants to look like a penguin on purpose. Fireworks have been done to death, and animals are trite and too Vegas.

I said to myself that I’m going to do something different, something that nobody else has done. It starts with what amounts to the world’s biggest duck blind. That keeps guests wondering and it also keeps my neighbors from tipping off the authorities. It also means that I won’t be needing permits.

“Yes everyone, it is a coyllar, also known to us as a ‘trebuchet.’”

Oh, if they could see the looks on their own faces, like children on Christmas morning in front of hundreds of presents.

“And that, is a Grand Piano. Shall we countdown together?”

“Ten, nine, eight,” ah, now they wake up and join in. “Seven, six, five, four, three, two, one!”

Wu-wonnnnggg!

I don’t know which is more impressive, the rush of air as the trebuchet releases that sizable object, or when it recoils back toward us. It is certainly astounding when something that takes four men to move on the ground, soars through the wind like an eagle. You can certainly imagine that despite being made of wood, that it would cut through a castle wall…or two.

And here comes the splash…no, it is not meant to be. I thought that sandbar was dredged out, this is anticlimactic in a way, though the cheers of my guests suggest otherwise. As long as they are happy, it was all worthwhile. Unfortunately, there won’t be any encores, lest my neighbors or the Coast Guard figures out where that monstrosity came from.

It was a Steinway Model M, Grand Piano, and it was a little less than five-hundred and eighty pounds. Give or take. A floating arm trebuchet would’ve been more efficient, but nothing is more fun than old school mischief. My, I do believe that is Babette’s come hither grin.

The End

This story was part of Informal Exercise #1 for the blog Icarus Flight To Perfection. A big thanks to Sue H. and Nicole for participating.

"Stone"

“You were exceptional today, Marisa.”

Jodi is a phenomenal physical therapist and she means well, but Marisa knows a half-truth when she hears it. She’s told more than her share, and it’s the greater part of her job to say things that have just enough veracity in them, that they could actually be plausible. Jodi builds up people one way, and Marisa? Well-

“Oh, my God, look at all the flowers!” Jodi exclaims with excitement, and she forgets that Marisa cannot maintain her balance without her. She catches Marisa before she falls, which is the first time anyone has ever done that in her life.

“Hey, Babe, I’m glad to see that you are up and about,” comes a smooth voice from behind them. Jodi turns and Marisa almost plummets again. “You like?” asks Roger with a tone so mellifluous that it would go well with either tea or bread. His looks surpass his voice, though despite her absence of makeup and her infirmity, Marisa is his equal in attractiveness.

Almost the entire room is covered in roses, and Roger holds out his arms and says, “Nothing is too special for my special lady.”

Yeah, “special.” Marisa notes that most of the blooms are old, spotted or have black leaves. Also, none of the colors match, so she figures that Roger must have raided every supermarket in the surrounding area…and possibly even some cemeteries. Roger gently tilts her chin, caresses Marisa and looks her over.

“That plastic surgeon did a pretty spectacular job. The scars are really only visible in direct sunlight.”

“I really don’t mind the scars,” Marisa mumbles.

“Well, hopefully another surgery can bring out all the beauty that was there before. Please…listen to your therapist, and work hard to get better. I miss you, and all the girls miss you, too.”

Roger kisses her, but Marisa turns away. He caresses her one last time and leaves.

Despite her envy, Jodi smiles. “Wow, you are really lucky to have a man like that. Have you two been together a long time?”

“Don’t worry about it,” she grunts as she sits on the bed with great difficulty. “Roger and I are not exclusive.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, he’s my pimp.”

No, Marisa doesn’t mind the scars at all. Despite her disheveled state, she still manages to turn heads in this hospital. These wounds are her reminder to work harder in her rehabilitation. They are a maimed mnemonic that someone did this to her, and that would-be killer is someone powerful. He’s possibly too powerful and untouchable for a simple prostitute like Marisa to get revenge.

She has always been able to spot the psychos, and that intuition never let her down. If anything, Roger let her down by offering her up on a platter to that “political advisor,” Clifton Maynard. Marisa is also fairly certain that Roger slipped her something that day, but it’s hard to remember just what happened.

She does remember the face of her attacker, and she has been reminded of it, as Clifton Maynard has been on TV twice since she has been admitted here. He was standing right behind the mayor with that deceivingly boyish grin. Marisa also remembers her disbelief at all that blood. She remembers thinking that it couldn’t possibly be all hers, but it was. Marisa wants to suppress her fear, her screams, and channel that pain into getting better.

***

“Welcome home, Baby!”

There are no flowers this time, and none of the girls are here to greet her. Roger believes that they are angry at Marisa because they had to work harder to cover the loss of the stable’s top earner, but Marisa knows otherwise. It took two more surgeries and six months of physical therapy to come to this full, twisted circle.

“You can take the next couple of days off, and get comfortable.”

Marisa already has, as it came to her in an anesthetic-fueled dream.

A pimp must know all the weaknesses of a woman, or he’ll go broke. Women can be mercurial, so Roger has always made it a point to stay one step ahead of the girls in his stable. Of course, that goes both ways in that Marisa knows Roger’s deficiencies almost as well as he knows hers.

For instance, he likes to videotape everything.

Everything.

Lorazepam.

It’s his Kryptonite. Marisa went without during her hospital stay, just so that her pimp could do with. Roger will OD tonight and it will look like a homicide, of that she is certain. Then, when Roger’s cousin reads about this, she will panic and send the media some copies of that tape of Clifton Maynard nearly killing Marisa.

Clifton will take the fall for Roger’s murder, of that she is almost certain. Either way, when all is said and done, she will kill two birds.

The End

This story was for Patti Abbott's latest flash fiction challenge, and you know that she always comes up with the best ones. She said-

"On Saturday night, we passed a young woman on the street who was talking to her male companion and said, "I really don't mind the scars." A good startup line for a little challenge perhaps. I looked for a picture to go with it but 1) they scarred (make that scared) me too much to post and 2) I felt like the pictures steered the story.

So how about a 800 or so word story that contains that line in it. How about an end date of February 28th? What do you think?

If you don't have a blog to post it on, I'll post it here with mine. Just give me a few days' notice."

For Valentine's Day: "The Price of Perfection"

In honor of Valentine's Day, I am linking "The Price Of Perfection," which has been on the third page of my blog for a few months.

The light from The Heart Nebula by Matt Russell from Apod.nasa.gov.

It was originally published in Issue #5 of Astonishing Adventures Magazine and after March, only a few of the story's paragraphs will be here. It's a tale about a man who loves a woman more than life itself. His...or the existence of anyone else.

So click here to pull the trigger, er, bow for Cupid.

Moo-lah

Sometimes I have more fun researching a story than writing it. That certainly is not always a good thing, but, hey. At any rate, as I was typing away, I wondered about the origins of the word "moolah," and please note, my spell check was wondering about it too. It turns out that there is no definitive story on its entomology, though this post by the Word Detective is the most interesting one out there-

One would think, with so many people wondering about the roots of “moolah,” that someone would have come up with at least one entertaining “urban legend” about the word, but no such luck.

What theories do exist about its origins are both terse and far-fetched. One holds that “moolah” derives from the French “le moulin,” meaning “the mill,” referring to factory mills as a source of wealth. Color me extremely unconvinced. But while we’re stretching plausibility to the breaking point, I must mention the recent announcement, by the Times of India newspaper, that “moolah” is the Fijian (as in Fiji, in the South Pacific) word for “money.”

Unfortunately, I lent my Fijian dictionary to my accountant last week, so I’ll have to wait until he gets back to check this assertion. But unless someone can explain how a Fijian word ended up on the lips of US gamblers and hipsters in the 1930s, I plan to ignore that theory. Yet another theory traces “moolah” to the Romany (Gypsy) word “mol,” meaning “to be worth,” which is not impossible but is considered unlikely by linguists.

Naw, those sound as hokey as the one that says it is old Spanish slang for "donkey," as apparently donkeys were fairly expensive beasts of burden. The other one that the Word Detective added made more sense-

Another theory, proposed by Daniel Cassidy in his recent book “The Secret Language of the Crossroads: How the Irish Invented Slang,” traces “moolah” to the Irish phrase “moll oir,” meaning “pile of gold.” My inclination is to consider this quite plausible, but Mr. Cassidy apparently paints with a very broad brush, also tracing “buckaroo” to the Irish “bocai rua” (wild boys). It has long been generally accepted, on solid evidence, that “buckaroo” is actually derived from the Mexican Spanish “vaquero,” meaning “cowboy.”

Begorrah! Judging by the accompanying jpeg to that post, money not only corrupts the mind, but it makes your head abnormally large and your body disappear.

Why La Cosa Nostra didn't set up shop in San Francisco

Uh, just what exactly is Marlon doing to the poor cat in this picture? Anyway, we have had our share of gangsters in San Francisco history. We even had an Aussie Mob during the Barbary Coast days, The Sydney Ducks, and they used to burn most of The City down on a regular basis.

Yet, even with our extensive history of crime (Dashiell Hammett didn't just pull all those stories out of his hat, you know), the Mafia never really did get a solid hold on the City of Saint Francis.

Retired policeman Kevin J. Mullen said, "Al Capone sent emissaries out to San Francisco in 1931 to case the joint, but decided it was "too tough" a town to crack." That may just be a proud cop talking, but Mullen says it's an easier town to police, given its size and geography, and the transcontinental railroad terminated in Oakland, after all.

That doesn't mean that they passed this area up altogether, because they set up shop across the San Francisco Bay, in Emeryville. Emeryville is now the home of Pixar and freeway traffic...so much freeway traffic.

"Yasmine's Garden"

September 3rd, 1987


Was it Robert Frost that said, “Good fences make for good neighbors?” Yasmine’s nearest neighbor is some four-hundred yards down this private, restricted road. And for good measure, the walls and fences around the house are eleven feet high, except for the front and back gates.

I should be at home, falling asleep to Johnny’s monologue. Instead, I’m stuck with a double Gordian Knot that cannot be solved or cut, and there is no kingdom to be had or any right answer to be found.

In this moonlight, the blood looks quite black.

There’s so much of it.

This is a small town in Northern California, and I can’t even tell you where, though as to why will all make sense in a few moments. It’s a nasty little place, full of pollution and polluted minds. There has been a little relative prosperity in the last decade or so, but don’t be misled, none of us that grew up here have had it easy. Especially Yasmine.

We’ve known each other since kindergarten, and she used to have the biggest heart of anyone that I have ever known. Her warm demeanor faded somewhat when both of her parents were killed in a car accident when she was seven. After that, bad things just went to worse, as her drunk aunt became her guardian and drank up the estate of Yasmine’s parents.

Her aunt drank them out of house and home in four years. Yasmine became a ward of the court and days later her aunt’s liver gave out. We didn’t see Yasmine for three years after that, as she bounced from foster home to foster home until she wound up back here. She was different by then, and in some ways, she was hardened like someone who had spent decades in prison.

It took until our senior year in high school to mend a friendship that shouldn’t have been broken. There were many things she wouldn’t talk about that affected her during those years, and she still won’t discuss them to this very day. After we graduated, we hung out every once in awhile, but we pretty much drifted apart again. Such is life; you might grow in a different direction than your friends, and then before you know it, you are an entire world apart from each other.

My mother asked me to drop something off at the little cottage Yasmine and her jerk boyfriend Clyde were renting from his grandparents. I can’t remember what it was my mother gave me, but I remember all too clearly what happened after I knocked on the door. When she opened the door, her right eye was a plum, purple and swollen. Yasmine jumping on my back was the only thing that saved Clyde’s life that day, and one of my knuckles never healed properly after that (it was still worth it).

She broke up with Clyde soon after that, and she stopped speaking to me for years, so I guess we were both punished for it in a way. Some months later I saw her in town, and she did a poor job of hiding another shiner behind some considerably large sunglasses. Yasmine ran away from me, yet I wasn’t even paying attention to her at that point, and I drove as fast as I could to Clyde’s.

He was both scared and surprised to see me, as Yasmine and he had not been an item for some time. She moved out of town not too long after that and I never did find her other abusive boyfriend, though I gladly would have risked my left hand improperly healing for a chance at revenge. I became a patrol officer just after she left, and eventually I became the town deputy. It really wasn’t an issue of me wanting justice, though I tried to do good whenever was possible, but I chose the job because it paid more than anything else around here.

I joined the force in 1977 and Yasmine came back to town in 1985, with more money than she ever had before. She had made her money with Apple Computer, and she was all set to buy the Miller property on the edge of town. She was friendly enough at first, but she became reserved when I asked what she would do all by herself with such a big place. After swearing me to secrecy, Yasmine confided in me that she wanted to run a shelter for abused women.

I told her that big house would be perfect for it, and nobody from in town or from the outside goes near the private road leading up to it. I helped her fix the place up, along with Eduardo, whose usual job is to fix everything both inside and outside for The County. It took a couple of weeks to bring it up to par, and the garden was the hardest part. It was also Yasmine’s pride and joy, where she spent countless hours toiling in it, despite her lack of a green thumb.

Gardening can be quite therapeutic, and whenever I brought groceries there from the next town over to avoid attention, Yasmine would have the newest woman at the house helping her out. Besides pitching in on house maintenance and food, I would make sure to drive by and to patrol the grounds. You never know just how far a man will go, if he won’t even hesitate to hit a woman. Often, Yasmine would be walking the grounds as well, though many times I didn’t see her until the last second.

Every once in awhile, I’d catch a non-local driving off the main town roads. I would call in their plates as I rode right on their bumper, just to let them know that whatever their intentions were, that they weren’t wanted in these parts. None of them ever came back, save a dark green ’71 Camaro from two towns over. I stopped him twice, and though he seemed nice enough, there was something about that large bastard that didn’t seem right.

If I told you I was surprised to see that same Camaro tonight, hidden some seventy feet off the road from Yasmine’s house, I’d be lying. It would also be a lie if I tried to convince you that this situation would never turn into something ugly. I was completely shocked, though, when I saw all that blood covering the jasmine flowers that Yasmine was named after. And I wanted to simply turn away in denial when I saw what was left of that big fake-polite asshole lying in the middle of the garden. Even in the dark, I could tell he had been cut and stabbed too many times to count.

The spatter and the trail of blood said that he was killed after climbing over and that his body was dragged. This week Yasmine has only three women staying at the shelter, and they are all outside with her. They are all covered in blood, just like her, and all four of them have knives. They put the knives right next to body, and they walk back to the patio.

I don’t know what to do, and as I walk towards them, I hear a twig snap. It’s Eduardo, and he’s trampling all over my crime scene with his size thirteens. I know that Yasmine has called him before me, and he stands next to the women in solidarity. I can’t let a murder go unpunished, yet if anyone is arrested, the shelter will be as good as closed. The Gordian Knots that are my brain and my heart tighten as if pulled by elephants startled by guns.

The End

This story is for the Fourth Installment of Icarus' Flight To Perfection. It combines the starter sentence of Katherine Tomlinson, "In the moonlight the blood looked quite black." And the four words of Nicole Hirschi; Fence, Mend, Court, and Misled.

A change to The Flash Fiction Offensive

There is a new addition to The Flash Fiction Offensive, David Barber is now their Editor! This will certainly be a trial by fire, but I certainly know that Dave will be up for it.

After all, this is what he has to go through just to get a pint at his local pub (here's an unsolicited bit of advice, Mr. Barber: never beat the neighborhood arsonist at darts).

Replay: "The Original Rainmaker"

Daniel O'Shea had a flash fiction challenge, and I had an idea mulling that had been simmering on the back burner for some time. I wanted to give closure to the traumatized strip club owner from "A Sheep In Wolf's Clothing," and the rest was cranked out pretty much inside of a day. The "crime fiction" tag is misnomer in a sense, as virtually no crime occurs in this story, and I made a conscientious effort to tone down the usual violence and occasional gore.




Without further adieu, here is "The Original Rainmaker."

A short poignant tale from Quin

It's rare when Quin Browne has time to write anymore.


So on the rare occasion when she does post her writing, she always hits it out of the park (is there such a thing as "writing steroids?").

"Eight Maids-A-Milking" is up at Dark Valentine Magazine's "Twelve Days of Christmas"

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you thrills, under-dressed chills, milk spills and hamburgers.

We're talking "Dairy Noir," with "Eight Maids-A-Milking." Which can only be found at Dark Valentine Magazine's "Twelve Days of Christmas."

"Santa Must Die" is up @Do Some Damage, and a cameo

Well, here is the last post for 2010, and...it's a different one.

For the Do Some Damage Christmas Fiction Challenge, I was going in one direction when I was writing the story, and I let the word count influence what direction it finally ended in. Either way, the working title was and is, "Santa Must Die." It's also the last Do Some Damage post of the year, so I might really have to move out of the country after this one (preferably to one without extradition).



In other news, over at Dark Valentine, Paul D. Brazill has the sixth day of Christmas covered, with Roman Dalton. I guarantee that he's a detective unlike any other that you've seen before. There's also a cameo by the biggest bastard that I've ever known, and he plays the bartender.

"The Barbarian's Story," as sung by Steve Perry

So I was over at "Davy Crockett's Almanack," the other day (which is the blog of author Evan Lewis), when what did I see? This cover-



Did you catch it? No, I'm not talking about anthropomorphic personification of that old Saturday Night Live character, the Land Shark. Naw, I'm talking about the author's name on this novel, "Steve Perry."

Wow, who would've thought that the 80's soft rock balladeer would have an inner barbarian? Mmm, probably not. Yes, I realize that the chances of the author and the crooner being the same person are nil, but maybe we should all "Don't Stop Cleaving."

Er, "Believing."

"The Big Lebowski," as written by Shakespeare?

So let me get this straight, "The Big Lebowski" as written by...




...William Shakespeare?

Yea, verily.

Christmas Isn't Over

Yeah, I relate to "Scrooged" just a little too much...

...mostly because when The Ghost of Christmas Present isn't jabbing my in the eyes, she's kneeing my groin.

"Oh, what is this, Cormac? Oh, oh look, Cormac! It's a toaster!"

Whaddya know, I fell for that, yet again. Well, just because December 25th has come and gone, doesn't mean that Christmas has to end. The folks over at The Do Some Damage Blog have a flash fiction Christmas Challenge still going strong. You already have Patti Abbott, John McFetridge, Richard Godwin, and Daniel B. O'Shea, as well as more strong crime authors still waiting to crawl down your chimney.

As they used to say on the old Ronco commercials, "but wait, that's not all!" The folks over at Dark Valentine Magazine have kicked off "The Twelve Days of Christmas."

That means a new Christmas story every day every day, until January 6th, 2011! You will get tales from Andrew Douglas, Kat Parrish, Nigel Bird, John Donald Carlucci, Christine Pope, Kaye George, and Paul D. Brazill.

Guess who got "Eight Maids-A-Milking?" No, not Danielle Steele. Guess again...no, not Michael Chabon.

"Streaking For The Shy"

No, it's not this kind of streaking, but if I presented a picture of the other kind? You would probably shine this post on, you, crazy diamond.

Nor am I talking about a streaker of this variety, though this is an image...never mind. The point is, Splotchy did a brilliant short film last spring (which I first found a link to at Freida's), called "Streaking For The Shy," and it is more than worth your time to pop on over to his blog and check it out.

"Sometimes"

Sometimes...promises are made to be broken. Sometimes “for richer finds” another home and “for poorer” outlasts its welcome like termites feeding on an already-shaky retaining wall. Sometimes for better is as unrealistic an expectation as winning the lottery, and “for worse” is as real and tangible as the air that we all breathe.

Sometimes we don't learn from our mistakes, and we wind up being amnesiacs on a Möbius strip of senselessness. Sometimes we remember that children are not weapons, so the lawyers will seek other means of provocation and waging war. Sometimes we cannot move ahead, because the little children inside of us are too scared of a world that will change and that will be different. Sometimes love is a many splintered thing, and tweezers and antiseptic are hard to come by.

Yet most of the time, I love you no matter what, and that is for always.

Image from artlies.org.

This was done for the Third Session of Icarus' Flight To Perfection and the starting sentence I chose was, "Sometimes, promises are made to be broken."

"Dancing With Myself" Interview @ Nigel P. Bird's Sea Minor

Honestly, I wanted this guy to do it...

...but he's been busy with other things lately.

So, I interviewed myself for the series "Dancing With Myself Interviews" over at Nigel P. Bird's Sea Minor. Pop on over and maybe it will clear up a few things about me...or maybe it will confuse you even more.

If I had a chance, I'd ask the world to dance...

Here's to Paul's 2nd Anniversary!

Please stop by Paul D. Brazill's blog and wish him a Happy Second Anniversary! It was wonderful to see your career at its inception, and here's to your continued success, Sir! Na zdrowia!

The Winter Issue of Dark Valentine Magazine is here!

The Winter Issue is here!

With stories from Patti Abbott, Christine Pope and Dale Phillips. Not to mention some outstanding art by Mark Satchwill, Pamela Jaworska, Karyn Lewis, and the amazing cover by Jane Burson.

Don't forget, when you get to the back of this magazine, there is an important ad at the end ; )

If there's a bustle in your...

...Heathrow, don't be alarmed now. It's just the airport's first "writer-in-residence," Alain de Botton.

My favorite quote from the article, "I would love to run British Airways, and feel I would be eminently qualified for the job. I don't know very much about making money, and nor do they.

However, I am deeply fascinated by the mechanics of getting planes in the sky and around the world -- and that's their area of expertise, too."

Oh, and Alain, nothing is wrong with JFK. It's a perfectly serviceable airport, especially considering the amount of traffic, and the Port Authority keeping it in a perpetual state of (dis)repair. Try being lost in the bowels of LaGuardia or dealing with the expanse and lack of heating in Detroit. You'll be begging for the mild inconvenience of JFK.

The Messenger Gets The Ricochet

It was Sunday, and there shouldn't have been a letter in the mailbox, but there was. The last four days had been hell, but Hardy Shepard had a feeling that whatever was in that envelope was going to make everything worse. It was surely lemon juice and salt on the gaping psychic wound which he was already contending with.

***

The Bremer Company was a public relations firm, and it was the epitome of corporate/employee relations until seven years ago. The founder and president, Jeff Bremer, was a benevolent leader and friend to everyone, until he met the girl of his dreams, Emma, who was thirty-eight years his junior.

Emma blessed Jeff with three children, and that was three more children than she intended to raise. As Emma dedicated her time to shopping and spas, Jeff became both father and mother. The more time he spent away from his company, the more he decided that he really didn’t need it after all. Jeff figured he would be better off if he simply sold the company, but he didn’t want to pay out any would-be bonuses or severance packages. He also decided out that he would keep the money for himself and let the company flounder a bit, and then he could sell it off for cheap.

The thing was that Jeff didn’t want to deal with each and every employee during the execution of his plan, so he needed a hatchet man to deliver the bad news as the company was pared down. He thought he had found that hatchet man in Hardy, when he overheard a remark that he made. When an employee’s car was towed for parking in one of the handicapped spaces, Hardy notified the employee long after the fact and was met with a barrage of cuss words.

Hardy replied, “Don’t shoot me, I’m only the messenger.”

Jeff noticed a gleam in Hardy’s eyes at that tidbit, and he knew that he found a low-rent Judas. And he had, though the first couple of times were difficult for Hardy. The young would-be executive decided that he would find resolve by using slights his fellow employees had wrought upon him...both real and imagined.

Dennis, who ate everyone’s food in the refrigerator? Oh, that was the icing on the cake. Ava R. had never done anything wrong to Hardy, so he simply called her "Avarice" in his mind before he told her the bad news. Ava G, however, was tipsy at last year's Christmas party and she pawed at him in front of his girlfriend Dani. Dani believed that Hardy was cheating on her, and he wound up spending Christmas and New Year's alone.

But Mort never did anything wrong to him...hell, Mort helped Hardy move, and he even helped him install his home theater when such devices needed a degree in electronics and a contractor’s license. It didn’t take long for Jeff’s hatchet man to become a pariah, which only made Hardy relish giving his fellow workers the shaft even more. The more he was shunned, the more he began to savor being the villain.

The Germans have a word for what he was feeling, “schadenfreude,” which is the feeling of enjoyment in seeing the misfortunes of others. Hardy stopped going to the few company parties and picnics that the Bremer Company bothered to throw (everyone had mistakenly chalked the reduction in festivities to the economy).

Alas, when Jeff personally let his attack dog go last Friday morning, Hardy didn’t see it coming at all. He thought all along that he was going to be rewarded handsomely for doing the dirty work, but his prize ultimately was being left to do the walk of shame in front of the ten remaining people. Unlike all the others he had given termination notices and layoff slips to, no one made any effort to console Hardy. They wouldn’t have urinated on him if he were on fire.

So here this envelope has been sitting by the front door, the unopened white elephant in the room. He picks it up, cuts an end open with scissors and slides out the contents. In it he finds a letter that shows it was sent from his former fax machine right back to the same machine. A little opening salvo that was delivered, no doubt, from whomever escaped the bloody axe that Hardy used to wield. The first page is a list of everyone that he had to give the bad news to, and there are more people than the former hatchet man can initially remember, though they were all let go by him.

The second and last page is a low-res picture of Hardy when Jeff gave him notice. Hardy Shepard has cried all of three times since he turned fifteen. The first time was when his favorite aunt passed painfully and quickly from cancer. The second time was when the Chicago Bears lost the Super Bowl in 2007. And the third? Well, Hardy’s reaction is all too clear despite all pixilation; that of a child who has had his sand castle stomped, dropped his ice cream cone in the sand, and has been slapped.

Hardy decides to take a shower, where no one will see or would notice tears that can’t seem to stop.

The End

This was written for the Second Session of Icarus' Flight To Perfection. There were three starter sentences to chose from and I went with, "It was Sunday, and there shouldn't have been a letter in the mailbox, but there was."

Caveat Scriptor

Jeez.

For your perusal, "The Silver Wraith"

Though Blogger has had the Page Feature for some months, I have yet to see anyone actually use it. How does that work into this post? Keep reading.


My story "The Silver Wraith," was originally intended for Astonishing Adventures Magazine, but it really didn't mesh from a tonal standpoint (IMHO, not the Editorial Staff's). It's a little too long for Thrillers Killers 'n' Chillers, so at this blog is right where it will stay. If you go to the top of the blog, it's the tab in the middle, right underneath the header.

So, if you add one part crime fiction + one part pulp + one part horror = "The Silver Wraith."

All Hallow's Reave

Here is Halloween, in all of its terror, and by "terror," I mean adults in costumes that fall under the category, "things you cannot unsee." To take your mind off of that, we at Cormac Informercials™, have the second story in Katherine Tomlinson's NoHo Noir Series, "Wrong Turn." Check the Mark Satchwill illo-




Plus, you get horror from across The Pond. Lewis J. Peters has a short one up on his blog called, "The Horror of Halloween."

Oh, and call me lazy, but I will repost "Succuba," yet again. But if you call within the next five minutes, I'll even add "Introductions Are In Order," at no extra cost. Just pay shipping and handling. So call now, operators are standing by.

NoHo Noir @ Patch.Com

NoHo? Where in the world is "NoHo?"

Who is this woman? And who is she talking to? Who does these dynamite illustrations? All will be revealed in Katherine Tomlinson's tale "House Blend," which can be found at Patch.com.