by Luca Veste
I couldn’t help myself. And it wasn’t like Rita, I mean, Rita and I were in a rut, you know, the daily grind. And then Monique came along, it was something else, butterflies in my guts, I think we might have loved one another, maybe. Maybe it was just what we told ourselves as we screwed in her bed, the bed she shared with her cop husband, and when she told me she was ending it, she couldn’t stand herself, she was telling Rita, I just, I don’t know, I…
I keep imagining that each loop is a Hail Mary and that maybe this prayer is the one, maybe there will be forgiveness. I’ll taste Rita’s tenderness again. Maybe I’ll catch Neil as he dives for the swing, spin him, raise him up, burst with laughter, and pretend I’m helping him navigate the wide open sky.
BIO: Chad Rohrbacher lives in NC with his family. He’s published stories in Needle Magazine, Crime Factory, Flash Fiction Offensive, Big Pulp, Twist of Noir, and others. His novel, ‘Karma Backlash’, will be released by Snubnose Press in 2012. More information at www.chadrohrbacher.com
BACK IN BLACK
‘A HIRAM VAN STORY’
by
Court Merrigan
The two Russian girls were right where Charti said, lounging on beach chairs down by the water across from Starbucks, passing a tall bottle of beer back and forth. I dashed off a text then tossed my cigarette and padded through the sand of Pattaya Beach, at a sideways angle so they could see me coming. When I stopped in front of their chairs the girls sat up. One of them had a cat in a top hat tattooed on her left shoulder. The other had a hooknose.
‘If you want to live,’ I said in Russian, ‘listen to me.’
***
My name is Hiram Van. My current passport says elsewise, but that’s my name. Just a few minutes earlier I had been getting half-cocked in the Sapphire Shark Go-Go when Charti texted me the two Russian girls had finally shown.
Fah, the slinky go-go girl I’d taken back to my hotel five nights in a row, was onstage romancing the poles to ‘Back In Black,’ all sequins and lace and saddle-brown skin. You can’t sit in a go-go in Thailand all night not drinking or taking anyone home. As cover went, I’ve had worse.
Those two girls had popped a mobster a roofie during a three-way back in Mother Russia and filched his cash and laptop. Whatever was on that hard drive had kept them on the run for a couple months now. Still, they weren’t the kind to hibernate in hotel rooms, slipping out for plates of rice late at night. Three nights ago Charti spotted them down on the beach, but they were gone by the time I got there. So I set up camp in the Sapphire Shark. I trusted Charti to find them before someone else did.
Charti was a hustler all right, gold King Chulalongkorn medallions strung around his neck, sporting flip-flops and a baggy tank top, and he knew every pimp and pusher along Pattaya Beach. He called me ‘sir’ when he sold me the hot iPhone he’d just texted me on, but he never stood too close, like he expected me to cause a crime scene any minute.
I slid the iPhone back in my pocket and called for the bill and finished watching Fah promising paradise for a few thousand baht. I told the waitress to keep the change and stood up adjusting my fanny pack. Fah smiled at me, long and hard. I nodded to the mamasan on the way out. The mamasan didn’t nod back.
Outside I threaded the stalls selling T-shirts and Buddhas and porn to tourists, practicing Russian phrases in my head. I’d been practicing for two weeks. The crew was on holiday for the rainy season but I was raised by workaholic ranchers and I felt uneasy if I wasn’t on a job.
Dodging tuk-tuks and pickup taxis and motorbikes across Beach Road I could tell I was a lot more loaded than I ought to be. I stopped to toke a cigarette, ease the whirligigs out of my head. Across the road I could hear the last licks of ‘Back In Black.’
‘Hey sexy hansum man’ called the hookers and ladyboys tarted up in the shadows. Pimps and thieves squatted on the benches smoking as drunk Arabs and Swedes and Aussies stumbled past to bargain with the whores and pushers. An international flesh bazaar, one you could melt right in to. That’s what those two Russian girls were probably thinking. I understood. Half breed Thai-American mongrel like me, I operated under the same M.O.
***
The tattooed girl said something to hooknose. Then something to me. I didn’t understand a word.
‘I know who you are,’ I said. ‘If you want to live, listen to me.’
The two girls were holding hands and looking at me.
‘If I can find you,’ I said, ‘they will too.’
That was the end of my Russian. The two girls exchanged a few phrases. The one with the tattoo said something to me. It sounded like a question. I had no answer.
Hooknose jumped from her chair fast as a bony antelope. Almost knocked me over on account of the whiskeys at the Sapphire Shark. I belted her in the face, got her back in the chair. Pretty sure I broke her jaw but it wasn’t going to matter to her long. Up on the promenade a couple ladyboys looked at the chairs and then me and then walked away.
The tattooed girl blubbered. ‘Please,’ she said in English. ‘Please.’
‘No,’ I said.
A sleek jet boat gunned into the beach. The tattooed girl threw the beer bottle at me. I caught it in the air. A couple Russians jumped from the prow. One of the Russians pushed past me and pistol-whipped the tattooed girl. The other one scooped up hooknose from the chair. The girls didn’t kick and they didn’t scream. The fight was gone out of them. The Russians waded into the water and threw the girls onboard then eased the boat back out into the inky water.
I readjusted my fanny pack and walked back up the beach and crossed Beach Road to the tourist stalls. Charti would text me when the money was wired.
BIO: Court Merrigan has been published widely, including PANK, A Twist of Noir, Shotgun Honey, Necessary Fiction, and Evergreen Review. You can find links at http://courtmerrigan.wordpress.com/short-stories/. He lives in Wyoming’s banana belt with his family.
LIFE ON MARS?
By
Paul D. Brazill
Jed waited until he heard the door slam before he crawled over to the side of the bed and attempted to sit up. The room jolted as he moved. He took a deep breath and waited a few minutes before trying again. A cold worm of sweat crawled down his spine. His body prickled. Acid gurgled in his stomach.
It was Saturday.
He eased himself up. It would be good hour before Niki came back; she always did a tour of the charity shops on Saturday mornings, looking out for those old paperback books that she’d collected for as long as he’d known her.
He opened his eyes, took another deep breath and then stumbled out onto the landing.
First stop was the bathroom. He wobbled onto his knees and held onto the toilet bowl as the bile burnt its way out of him. Tears poured from his red eyes. He held onto the sink, eased himself up, and then rubbed his face with a cold flannel. He crept downstairs.
There wasn’t a great deal of debris from the previous night’s party; Niki had obviously tidied up a little as the night went on. But there was enough to suit Jed’s needs.
At the end of the night, before he’d gotten too drunk, he’d tried to remember to leave something in the bottom of each can of cider before opening a new one. Then he’d left them strategically around the front room, ready for the next morning’s pick me up.
Over the next few minutes he downed the dregs of each can; simultaneously gagging and smiling to himself as he felt the hangover slowly edging away.
He sat down on the sofa and picked up an almost full bottle of blue coloured WKD from the coffee table. He remembered Niki chastising him for buying ‘that chav crap,’ saying that the chemicals in it were probably even more lethal than the vodka they were mixed with. He had to admit, it was pretty disgusting, but it would do the trick and keep tomorrow’s shakes and the horrors at bay.
A glance at the clock and Jed hurried himself. He picked up a glass and the bottle of WKD. He headed upstairs, taking two at a time, tripping and farting as he went.
The bathroom smelled of puke so he opened a window and sat on the toilet. He pissed and picked up the bottle of blue alchopop. He had a sip and poured the booze into the glass. Then he carefully filled the empty WKD bottle with the blue mouthwash that he kept near the sink. He washed the bottle out and filled it with the booze from the glass; it looked pretty much identical.
That would help his get through tomorrow morning. He took the bottle downstairs, yawned and trudged back to the bedroom.
A warm, womb like feeling crept over him as he went back to bed. Just before he sank into the quicksand of sleep, he thought he heard the front door open.
***
Cutter had known it was Jed from the moment he’d first clapped eyes on him. Mind you, he’d changed a bit over the twenty-odd years since he’d last seen him; he looked well respectable now, though, what with his linen shirts, sandals, Oxford don specs. But that weird walk was distinctive. It could only have been him. Little heel clicks like a Gestapo officer. That was Jed Bramble to a tee.
When they were teenagers, Jed and Cutter were a team. The first Clockwork Orange skinheads in town. They had a right old laugh, too. Especially on Friday nights, after they got kicked out of the Youth Club.
They’d started off smashing up phone boxes, putting in the Paki shop windows, tripping up pensioners. Beating up the odd tramp that was asleep in a bus shelter. And just after midnight, they kicked the shit out of the two old donkeys that were tethered up in the graveyard. Until one of them went blind and the other died.
They had to up the ante, though. Raise the stakes. Which was where the old puff came in. They got a lot of laughs out of him. He always let them into his house, hoping for a feel, probably. They’d drink his crap sherry and smash a few of his antiques, slap him about a bit and then piss off home. But that got boring, too.
Then, one night, they tried to use a fountain pen to take a big lump of wax out of one of the old puff’s ears. Hacky they were. And he was squealing as they did it. He wouldn’t stop. Annoying, it was. Cutter lost his rag and slammed the pen hard, deep into the eardrum and the old bloke collapsed, blood trickling out. Jed freaked out. So they grabbed his wallet and burnt the place down.
Cutter didn’t see much of Jed after that and then Jed’s family moved somewhere down south. He saw him in the local paper once, though, getting his degree from some posh university.
And that had been that.
A few years later, Cutter went inside for GBH and met up with, Beetle Bailey, a bloke that was doing time for stabbing a blind man and setting fire to his guide dog. They had a cracking time in the nick. Plenty of pills, home-made booze and ‘pets’.
When Cutter eventually got out, the probation sent him down south, since none of his family wanted anything to do with him. His home town was off limits, they said.
The half-way house where he lived was a shithole, though. Worse than prison. But seeing Jed the other week gave him an opportunity. A way out.
So, he’d started following him. Learned his habits. Found out where he lived. Where he hid the spare key.
And today, he’d waited until Niki had left home and headed off toward the park. Then Cutter had walked towards the house and let himself in.
***
Niki soaked up the sun as she strolled down the high street, a couple of vintage paperbacks stuffed under her arm. She’d been to the deli, too, and picked up some organic sausages and some cactus juice for breakfast. She swung the canvas shopping bag as she strolled into the park. It was a golden autumn morning.
She spotted a couple of the men from the halfway house sat on a bench, smoking roll ups. She nodded to them and gave a weak smile. They sat there every day watching the world go by. People usually gave them the cold shoulder but she thought they were harmless enough. Well, apart from the one with the pony tail and the bushy moustache. He gave Niki the evil eye whenever she saw him. But he wasn’t there now and Niki felt relieved, for some reason. And, again, she counted her blessings. The kids were doing well at University; Jed and her had good jobs and were in good health. They had a nice house, in a nice area.
Not for the first time, Niki felt that the world was a benevolent place. That she was at one with the universe. That the stars and the planets had aligned to make her … a lucky woman. A contented woman.
The sense of well-being stayed with her as she walked home and only shuddered briefly when she walked up the garden path and saw that the front door was wide open.
BIO: Spinetingler Award nominee Paul D. Brazill was born in England and lives in Poland.His stuff has appeared in loads of classy print and electronic magazines and anthologies, including the 2011 Mammoth Book Of Best British Crime. His noir/horror series Drunk On The Moon and short story collections Brit Grit & 13 Shots Of Noir are out now.He writes a column for Pulp Metal Magazine and contributes to Mean Streets Magazine.He is a member of The Hardboiled Collective.His blog is You Would Say That, Wouldn't You?http://pdbrazill.blogspot.com/
SUPERSTITION
by
Nick Boldock
Black cats are supposed to be lucky. Christ knows why. The damn things are everywhere – what’s so lucky about that? I see them all the time – one in particular – and I’ve never been lucky in my entire life. Not once. Seeing a bloody cat never made any difference. Mind you, I could grow an acre’s worth of four-leaved clovers and I’d still be the unluckiest bastard alive – that’s just my lot in life.
Next door to me, there’s a black cat, which insists on shitting in my front garden. Filthy animal. Why I should have to clear up the faeces of somebody else’s cat is beyond me. There’s some young tart lives next door. I don’t really know her but perhaps I should go and introduce myself by presenting her with a faceful of her precious animal’s shit, gathered from my admittedly rather downtrodden veg patch. Perhaps she’ll be so repulsed that she’ll help me hold the cat down while I gouge its fucking eyes out. Not exactly original I know, but it’d make me feel better.
She’s unlikely to go for that though. Instead, predictably, she’ll half-heartedly apologise and bleat on about how cats are wild animals and are compelled to follow their nature. Fair enough, but I’d much prefer it if it followed its nature in someone else’s garden, thanks.
Right on cue, there it is on the windowsill, glaring at me. I give it the two-fingered salute but it doesn’t move, although it does seem to frown at me in a feline sort of a way.
It’s taken to doing that lately, sitting on the windowsill. I’ve stopped banging on the window and shooing it away because it only comes back five minutes later. I’d close the curtains but it’s the middle of the day and the sun’s shining and I’m buggered if I’m going to let that little furry fucker spoil the good weather.
It’s lunchtime. Betting shop’ll be open. Shoes on, out the door, money to lose. That’s my Saturday really – perhaps a punctuating pint in the pub by the bookies, but aside from that it’s just placing (and then losing) a few bets, really.
I step out the door and the bloody cat nearly knocks me arse over tit. It’s decided to return home – propelling itself at high speed over the fence – just as I leave the house. Its fur brushes against me as it flies past. I aim a wayward kick at it.
I’m away down the bookies. I go in and study the form for a bit and then pick a couple of horses running in back-to-back races at Wolverhampton. One of them’s at forties but I fancy it so I back it anyway. I never bloody win so it doesn’t really matter. It’s just an excuse to get out the house, really. I back both nags on a double, so if both of them win (yeah, right) then I’ll be laughing. Bet placed, I fuck off to the pub for a pint. I’ll come back in half an hour or so to see how long the horses ran for before falling over and being mercilessly shot.
The pub’s quiet although I see a couple of familiar faces that I nod at, out of politeness. I nurse a pint of too-warm Guinness for half an hour or so, watching the same news headlines tick over every two minutes on the tellies in the corner.
Whe
n the glass holds nothing more than some furry off-white foam, I trudge back to the betting shop to pick another couple of useless horses. I check my slip first – you never know; it could be my lucky day.
And it is. They’ve only gone and won – both of them. I’m shaking as I hand over the betting slip, unable to work out how much I’ve won. The cashier hands me just over two hundred quid. I’m grinning like Hugh Hefner at a convention for dumb blondes. My luck’s in, for the first time ever.
I shove the cash deep in my jeans pocket and decide against any more bets. I’m thinking it’s a good time to go down the shops and get some decent beer in for a change instead of the usual cheap shit. Maybe some proper scran too, something that costs more than a quid and tastes like actual food. I’m a tiny bit chuffed.
The door to the bookies swings shut behind me. I stand for a second, squinting into the sun and smiling. There’s a weird noise beside me, down on the pavement. I look down and there, sitting and staring up at me, a loud meow still on its tongue, is next door’s cat. I recognise it because it has a chunk missing from one ear, which I’ve always found amusing.
It meows at me again and I have to admit, it’s quite cute when you look at it properly. It has a cheeky expression that reminds me of myself. And maybe – just maybe – it’s lucky after all. I bend down and tickle its ears. The cat nuzzles up against my hand.
‘I’m not going soft or anything’, I tell it, ‘And this doesn’t mean you can keep shitting in my garden, alright?’
***
I have a fantastic week with my unexpected winnings. The following Saturday I’m getting ready to go out to the bookies when the cat appears on my windowsill again, just like last weekend. He doesn’t look quite so evil anymore, and I can almost forgive his relentless urge to defecate on my carrots. I notice I’m thinking of him as a ‘he’ and not an ‘it’. I step outside and this time instead of hurdling the fence he skips over and rubs up against my legs.