by Luca Veste
Please, she said to me, snot running down her face. Why are you doing this? Please…
I bent down to pet her matted hair. Don’t worry, Martina, I said. I took off my dog collar and very gently put it around her neck.
Those dogs over there? I said. They’re either gonna kill you or fuck you. You gonna let them do either?
BIO: Heath Lowrance is the author of the cult novel THE BASTARD HAND, as well as a short story collection called DIG TEN GRAVES. Currently, he's writing the ‘Hawthorne’ series of weird western stories for Trestle Press, and his second novel will be out in early 2012. He was a dirty, no-good punk when he was a kid, and thought of Iggy & the Stooges as gods. He STILL does.
LIGHT MY FIRE
By
AJ Hayes
You don't catch a man like Paul. You track him, subtly, silently, through your network. You don't blunder about looking, calling attention to yourself. No, you sit quietly, a pale spider in the dark, listening to: a rumor in Paris about something someone said and someone repeated in an internet cafe in Port Au Prince; a fragment of a conversation in a bar half a world away; a whisper on the internet that a miniature oil painting was bought in a bazaar in Marrakesh by a nameless Japanese collector of such works. You listen and you listen. For twenty years. Until you catch a break. Until you know where he is.
***
A faceless building, white with blue shutters, on a nameless street in Athens. I climb the midnight stairs carefully staying to the inside edge of the flats. I am smoke. A ghost. Silence moving. The door yields without sound and I slip inside, ready. But not ready for the flash of light, the sudden pain in my chest and the long fall into deeper darkness.
When I open my eyes again, Paul fills them. Sitting in a small, yellow chair under a single ceiling light. I lunge and find my arms and legs restrained by steel bands that hold me upright.
‘Hello, David,’ he says. ‘Long time.’
He has the autopsy pictures of Jenny spread out on the floor in front of him. The wreckage of her face. The wreckage he made. He lifts his acid blue eyes to mine and waits.
The word comes hard, boiling hot, like a tumor.
‘Why?’
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Why?’ He looks past me. ‘That's what I thought. After. That's the reason I ran.’ Before I faced you again. I had to know.’ He makes a small shrug. ‘And, finally, at a very small, very discrete, psychiatric clinic in a tiny town in Switzerland, I found out.’
***
‘When I arrived, a woman in a nurse's uniform took me to a an office where I met a small, gray man in a white jacket, sitting behind a black walnut desk, looking at the photos of Jenny I had brought. He studied them for a long while and then looked up.’
‘We can help you find what you want, he said. But there will be pain.’
‘He was right. There was pain. And drugs and methods ranging from tools of the Spanish Inquisition to North Korean Brainwashing technique to more modern practices. They tore holes in my head with chainsaws and electricity and some things I can't remember. Three years of it. I pissed myself, shit my pants and lost my fingernails scratching long , bloody gouges in the walls of my cell. I barely remember those years. But, at last, the doctor and I stood at the very bottom of my mind. And we both saw the reason, the why of that night.’
He waits a moment, his eyes in deep shadow. Always the drama queen. Always.
I strain against my bonds, wanting to hear everything. Wanting to finally know all of it.
‘The doctor called it an NRP. A Non Repeatable Phenomena.’
He is staring at the photos on the floor. I can't see his face. Just his thick, brown hair.
‘Everything had to be perfect. I had to stand for no reason. She had to look at me. I had to see my clay blade on my stand. If you had been a half-hour early. If it hadn't been raining. If the TV had been on. If any one thing of all of it had been the slightest bit different. It would never have happened. Ever. Still, I did stand, it was raining, you were not there and she looked at me.’ A shudder convulses him. ‘Twenty-eight minutes and thirty seconds later, it was all over. Jenny, you, me and life were over.’
When he looks up his eyes are blue flame.
‘There was no reason, David. No reason at all. I was lightning. She was a tree. I was a driver on a dark, rainy night and she was a deer leaping across the road. We were a collision of an instant and an impulse. An NRP.’
I can't move. Can't think. I was carefully led to this bleak place. To hear this terrible answer. By my friend. By my partner. By my love. All for nothing? A random event? I feel the blood from the cuts my nails make in my palms running down my wrists. I am crucified.
***
‘David!’ Paul's voice scatters my thoughts. ‘David, look at me,’ he says. I reach for him with my eyes.
‘What,’ I say.
‘We have something to do, my love. Something to finish.’ His voice is the strong-willed thunder I remember. The voice of the artist, the minimalist genius I adored.
‘What,’ I say again. It's the only word I can manage.
He points a small remote over his shoulder and clicks it. Behind him, across the room, a pin light illuminates a stainless steel switch plate with two black levers protruding.
‘Five minutes after this is over, your restraints will open.’ He pauses. Looks at me closely. ‘This is important, David.’
I nod.
‘Good. When you are free. Walk over there push the right hand switch and turn around. Got it?’
I nod again. It's all I can do. I am blank now. The world is light years away, fading fast. Paul's voice is the only thing holding me in it.
‘The wall. Push the right hand switch. Turn around’ I choke out.
‘When you have seen enough. Push the left hand switch. The left hand switch.’ His command voice is back. He makes sure I understand. ‘Walk out the door. It will close and lock behind you. Thirty seconds after you push the switch everything in this room with be burned to vapor. Nothing left. Hell Fire Mine. Eight thousand degrees. Nothing but blackened concrete left. Understand?’
I whisper, ‘Yes.’
‘Good,’ he says. ‘Now we can start. Watch it all, David. Every piece of it.’
I do.
***
He is unhurried. His knife blade moves slowly. Cuts deep. Precise, economical cuts. So much blood in his eyes I don't know how he can see. Maybe he can't. He must have practiced the moves a thousand times. They are perfection. The exact replication of Jenny's face. The way he left it -- and her. The pain must be indescribable in the last few moments, but his hand never falters.
Then, he makes two swift cuts to his jugular veins and three minutes later he slumps.
Gone.
I look at the digital clock above the switch plate. It took exactly twenty-eight-minutes and thirty seconds.
When the restraints fall open. I stumble across the room and press the right hand switch. Bright light erases the darkness. I turn and see and my knees give way. The concrete scrapes my back as I slide down the wall.
My God, I think. My God.
***
Paintings. Hundreds of them in all the brilliant colours that Paul loved. Jenny is there laughing, her going to hell grin rendered, in Paul's perfect brushstrokes, a hundred times over. Paul at his keyboard writing his edifices of gossamer code. Me at the work station making sense of his genius, fitting it all into our design. Jenny in a business suit and a briefcase, going out the door the morning she made us all wealthy beyond dreams. It is all there. All of it. All of us. So much beauty. So much loss. And in the center of it all, one of Paul's sculptures. Paul and I with our arms around each others shoulders, each of us lost in the others eyes. Jenny between us, looking up, her arms behind us, protecting us as always. We are beautiful. We are glorious. We are young.
I reach behind me. Press the switch. And wait for the fire.
BIO: AJ Hayes lives near San Diego, California. His stories and poems been published in
venues like Yellow Mama, Eaten Alive, A Twist Of Noir, Shotgun Honey, Black Heart Magazine's Noir Issue. The Hard-Nosed Sleuth, Apollo's Lyre, Flashshot and Skin Diver Magazine among others. He has a story in Chris Rhatigan and Nigel Bird's Anthology: Pulp Ink. He likes to write about stuff and thinks it's nice to be able to fool some of the people some of the time—well, P.T. Barnum thought that first but AJ thinks so too.
REDEMPTION SONG
By
Sean Patrick Reardon
We called ourselves the Charm Street Shamrocks. Six Irish Catholic kids from working class families, just let loose from the 1976 sixth grade class of the John F. Kennedy School. Our parents were second generation Irish. We were first generation suburbs. Besides me, there was Billy Lydon, Jimbo Sullivan, Johnny Byrnes, Terry Grace, and Jackie Delmore. We wore kelly green tams with white pom-poms on the top. Jimbo’s grandma hand knitted them for us.
In a secret ceremony at our fort down by the railroad trestle, we cut the sleeves off our dungaree jackets and used green yarn to sew a shamrock on the right side pocket.
Billy had hit up his parent's liquor supply and filled a can of Tahitian Treat with Seagrams 7. We passed it around, each taking a swig. I remember it being nasty stuff and I'm sure the others did too, but we all held it down. Looking back, it wasn’t a big deal. By then, we’d all taken more than our share of the Communion wine and sipped off our dad's beers, when we would fetch them a round at barbeques. Or the meetings they had at Jackie’s dad’s house.
To us, it was how you did such things. Slicing your fingers and swearing a blood oath was the way the Guinea's did it.
***
Thirty-five years later, it’s only me, Terry, and Johnny at McDonough’s, paying respect at Jackie’s moms wake. Jackie and his dad ended up in the trunk of an El Dorado in 1988. Billy disappeared six months later while closing shop at the Dot Tavern. Jimbo’s got three years left to serve on a trafficking conviction. He could have taken a deal, but that’s not how we were raised. I’ve been living in L.A. for the last twenty years. Terry moved to Tampa in 2000.
Johnny’s still local, been out on disability for the last five years from the electricians union. He’s the one who tracked us down, told us about Jackie’s mom. Terry and I just got into town that afternoon.
‘So, where you guys staying?’ Johnny asks as we walk across the parking lot of McDonough’s.
‘Marriot in Burlington…until next week,’ I tell him.
Terry stops, lights a Newport, while Johnny opens the door to the Camaro.
Johnny says, ‘You ain’t staying there tonight dudes. Time to get good and fucked up. Lots of catching up to do.’
Terry takes shotgun. I get in the back. Ties and jackets come off.
‘What are you waiting for Shane?’ Johnny snaps his fingers with the left hand, reaches behind with his right.
‘Nice,’ I say, opening the cooler beside me. It’s filled with ice cold Heineken’s and a bottle of Jameson.
I uncap the beers with the opener on the side of the cooler, pass them out.
Johnny holds his bottle up, looks at us. ‘To the Shamrocks…the living, the dead, and the dying.’
We clank bottles. Johnny puts the Camaro in drive, lights up a joint, and we head to his place in Amesbury listening to ‘Fairies Wear Boots’.
***
Johnny takes out a set of keys and releases the padlock securing the two oversized doors on the shed that’s in the backyard of his place. He pulls them open. It's dark inside. The scent of pinewood fills my nose. Johnny flips the light switch. A big Harley Davidson is parked to the left. Behind it, something I have never seen before. It looks like a roofless golf-cart with three all-terrain wheels on each side and two propellers on the back. In the middle of the floor, an oak table with six chairs around it.
We take seats at the table.
Johnny gives Terry a look. ‘Let's get to it.’
Terry lays out a decent size pile of coke, starts dicing it up with a credit card. Johnny rolls a twenty into a straw. We each do two long rails. It has been at least ten years since I did blow, but I know right away it is quality shit.
Johnny tells me the golf cart is an Argo. He uses it during bow hunting season, to cross the river that runs behind his property. I notice a gun resting on the front seat.
‘What the fuck is that?’
Terry starts laughing. ‘Looks like a pistol. Don’t you think?’
‘No shit.’ I look at Johnny. ‘Is it loaded?’
‘Always,’ Johnny says. ‘Go ahead, it don’t bite. The safety's on.’
It feels like a toy in my hand. I tryout a couple poses, then point to the metal tube on the end of the barrel. ‘This a silencer?’
‘A suppressor is what it's called,’ Johnny says.
‘Never seen a gun before Shane?’ Terry asks, looking at Johnny. ‘Oh yeah, they don’t have guns in Fairyfornia. Do they?’
Johnny reaches out a hand. ‘Why don’t you put that down, before you shoot your fucking foot. You want to see a real weapon, check out my bow rig.’
He points to the door at the back of the shed. It looks sturdy, has a real lock on it, like it should be on the door of a house.
I put the gun on the table and follow Johnny to the door, while Terry walks over to the workbench that’s against the right wall. A tune box and a stack of CD’s are on top of it. Terry shuffles through the discs as Johnny sorts out the keys on the ring he’s holding. ‘The Wild Rover’ starts playing, loud. I know it’s the Clancy Brothers because I heard it hundreds of time growing up.
Johnny unlocks the door, pulls it open. A foul smell, amplified I'm sure by the coke, hits my nose.
‘What fucking stinks? It smells like shit.’
‘It is,’ Johnny says. ‘A living, breathing, pile of it.’
He flips the light on. I'm horrified, start back pedaling. Terry comes from behind, pushes me back inside.
***
It happens so fast, no more than three seconds. Terry lets off six shots, the casings flying out the right side of the gun, hitting the wall and bouncing to the floor. Every shot hits the old guy in the chest. Blood starts leaking, then flowing from the holes.
‘What the fuck!’ I'm stammering, shaking.
Terry’s already walked out. Johnny pushes me back out of the room, slams me against the wall. His right hand is around my neck, choking me, until I’m on my toes, gasping for air.
Johnny forces a finger over my lips. ‘Don’t say a fucking word…and calm the fuck down. It is going to be alright.’
Terry pushes the door closed with his foot.
Johnny starts releasing the tension on my throat, puts his lips close to my ear. ‘What’s done is done. No turning back.’
He let’s go, wraps his arm around my shoulder. Terry comes over, puts an arm around our backs and pulls us in tight.
***
As we walk back toward the house, I’m agonizing over the split second images I saw of the guy, before Terry shot him. He’s naked, arms and legs secured with leather straps to what looks like a homemade electric chair. Duct tape’s covering his mouth. His swollen and bloodied face is framed by white whiskers and the silver stubble on the sides of his head.
When we get in the house, the flat screen hanging on the wall is on. I see someone sitting in the leather La-Z-Boy boy chair, feet stretched out on the ottoman.
He raises a hand, points to the couch beside him. ‘Have a seat, lads.’
We take seats. Johnny points a thumb at me, says, ‘Gerry, this Seamus Murphy.’
‘Gerry McGowan.’ He reaches out and I lean forward, shake his hand.
He has deep blue eyes and snow white hair.
‘I guess you’ve had an interesting evening Seamus,’ He says in a soft, Irish accent. ‘I knew your father Seamus, he was a good man. Shame what happened to him. It’s been what, twenty years now, hasn’t it?’
‘Almost twenty-one, next month.’
‘So, what are you thinking about all
this Seamus? You must be a wee bit confused…even frightened perhaps?’
I try to keep it together, have respect, but I lose it. ‘And what the fuck would you think if someone killed a guy right in front of your eyes? Jesus Christ, what the fuck is going on?’
‘Believe me…this would have been sorted long ago, if it weren’t for Mary Delmore. God rest her soul. You see lad, after Jackie and Jackie Junior were murdered, I told her this would be made right. Franny McBride would get what’s coming to him. Mary would hear nothing of it. She said, ‘if she wanted it done, would have done it herself. When she’s gone and with her beloved Jackie’s, then, and only then, will be the time for justice’.
***
Terry and I watch from the shore as Johnny pilots the Argo into the river to dump McBride’s body.
BIO: Sean Patrick Reardon lives in Pepperell, Massachusetts with his wife and two children. He loves lacrosse, rock-n-roll, and hanging out with family and friends. Along with being the author of the crime thriller, "Mindjacker", his short fiction has been feature at Thrillers Killers 'n' Chillers, A Twist of Noir, Do Some Damage,a and has story in the upcoming Grimm Tales colllection. He blogs at:
http://seanpatrickreardon.blogspot.com
DOWN IN THE TUBE STATION AT MIDNIGHT
By
Ian Ayris
Some of us, some of us gotta earn a livin. Can't be helped. It's just the way it is. And down here, tonight, here in this tube station, I'm earnin mine.
I read a book once. Dante's 'Inferno'. Good, it was. All about Hell, and that. Over the door – to Hell – it had writ 'Abandon Hope All Ye What Enter Here'. Whitechapel tube station, this god-awful time of night, I reckon they should have it over the entrance – all in red flashin neon or something, Tell the punters, you know. Give em half a chance.
So, like I was sayin, some of us got a job to do. Mind you, I'm plannin on gettin out. Only so long you can do this – my line of work. You meet all sorts in this business, and it don't pay to get too close. But sometimes, you can't help it. I can't help it. I'm only fuckin human, after all.