by Luca Veste
The boy says nothing. Just looks confused.
‘Clever buggers had changed the laces for wire.’ Hadn’t seen one like it before. Took a good look around it like I was taking a photo of it in my mind. Alerted the rest of the team and we got together. ‘Told the boss all about it and he went in. Cocky sod, he is, Tony. Tony the Tiger we call him.’
The kids face hasn’t changed. Just looks confused.
‘Thing is, I missed something. Missed it because I’d got complacent. Buried in the wall a couple of feet away another device. The real sting in the tail. Blew Tony’s legs clean off. Bugger didn’t even scream.’
‘Jesus.’ I like the kid. He cares.
‘Hence, the thing with shoes.’
I get hold of my boots and stand. Walk over to the display, grab the chain on the Puma and pull it from the wall.
I put my foot into the shoe and admire the pair. ‘Thanks,’ I say, and leave.
‘Enjoy the shoes, sir,’ the kid says. He’d make a great searcher one day.
The security-men seem alert, pulling in their stomachs and getting ready for business.
I walk straight over to them, the chain following me on the floor like a pet snake.
The guys in uniform take a step forward.
I stop. Look at each in turn. Watch them step back.
I walk straight between them as if they’re not there.
Out on the street, I head for home. I walk quickly now, careful all the time to keep my feet in the centre of each slab.
BIO: Nigel Bird is the author of Dirty Old Town (and other stories) and the novella Smoke. Co-editor of the collection Pulp Ink, he produces the Dancing With Myself series over at his blog, Sea Minor.
SO LOW, SO HIGH
By
Pete Sortwell
As I’m stood up here, for a few split seconds at a time I wonder if I’m doing the right thing. I’m pretty sure I am. These bastards need to learn that they can’t keep fobbing people like me off. They can’t and they won’t get away with it. It ends now. Once this hits the news, that’ll show them.
Today I was in there telling the Doctor how bad things had got again. He looked me in the eye and for a moment I thought he was going to help me.
‘Here, Jed. Take these, you’ll feel much better.’
‘Brilliant,’ I thought. Some relief from the voices. From the noise I can never switch off. As I reach over to take the prescription the Doctor, he continues.
‘They can take up to two weeks to start working.’ Then he sits back in his chair smiling like he’s actually helped me.
‘Two weeks!? TWO FUCKING WEEKS!’ I yell standing up.
‘Please Mr Collins, calm down, it is really effective medication. I’ve..,’ he starts to say, but I cut him off with more screaming and shouting.
‘You Bastard. You Doctors have no idea, DO YOU!?’
He keeps trying to butt in but I’m not having it. In the end his desk gets turned over. He must have pressed some kind of panic button because before me or the voices have planned our next move a deafening alarm is going off. So I do what I always do when I’m scared - run.
As I’m belting it back through the waiting room and past reception people are bottle necking trying to get out. Old, young, women, the lot are barged aside as I make my way past them and out into the car park. I can hear sirens so it’s then I decide to head up here, to the roof. By the time I've managed to clamber up, most people have gone back into the surgery. A child sees me, though, and points me out to his Mum. She must have told staff inside I was up here because within a few minutes there are nurses, doctors and the braver of the patients are out in the car park, all looking up at me.
‘I’ll do it,’ I call down trying to make them scared. If this gets in the press, they’ll be sorry. They’ll have to do something, other than dish out pills that don’t work, then. I can see the headlines now: “MAN JUMPS FROM DOCTOR’S ROOF AFTER BEING REFUSED TREATMENT”. And serves them right too.
‘Jed, come down from there, we’ll help you,’ one of the nurses calls up to me.
‘How?’ I reply, only to see her starting to confer with the doctor standing next to her rather than answer me. I can’t trust anyone. They’re all liars.
I can see right down the lane from up here. The Police and the Fire Brigade are heading down. After a quick discussion, the voices confirm that it’s the right thing to do. So, much to the horror of everyone watching, I jump.
The landing went as expected.
‘You must be mad,’ says the WPC as she looks down at me hanging half in and half out of the hedge I'd aimed to land in-and missed.
'I might be mad, but I'm not bloody stupid,' I tell her, looking back up at the single storey doctor’s surgery.
BIO: Starting out writing in 2010, within 6 months he had a short story published in the RADGEPACKET ANTHOLOGY by Byker Books. Currently working on his debut novel Pete continues to write shorts on the side which are published in numerous places online and will be appearing in RADGEPACKET SIX in 2012. Pete enjoys writing crime fiction/Noir.
BEHIND BLUE EYES
By
Julie Morrigan
‘It was a mistake, Mac. I’m sorry …’
Bob was on his knees, hands tied behind his back, head bowed. His voice was muffled by the hood. The rope was cutting into his wrists, the skin abraded, but for all it was painful, it was the least of his worries.
Mac sighed audibly, almost theatrically. ‘What am I to do, Bob? What choice have you left me with?’
‘Mac, please. It’s my Ruby Wedding next month. Me and Jeanie. And we’re going to be grandparents soon—’
‘You should have thought of that before you stole from me.’
‘It was only a few hundred quid!’
‘It was thousands. You’d been at it for months.’
‘I needed the money.’
Gambling debts. Mac knew. ‘You should have come to me if you were in trouble. Haven’t I always seen you right?’
‘I know, Mac, I know. And I wish I had. If I could turn the clock back … I was going to pay it back, though. Every penny.’
‘You know as well as I do that once you start down that road, you don’t stop. You never pay it back. It only ends when you get caught.’
‘I was desperate.’
Mac could imagine how Bob must have felt. Trapped. Scared. Caught between a rock and a hard place, his bookie at his back chasing him for money, this confrontation with Mac always just a step ahead. Inevitable.
‘You should have come to me,’ Mac repeated.
Bob was sweating, and it had nothing to do with the hood or the fact that it was summer. It was freezing in the warehouse, kneeling on concrete, the wind blowing in off the river robbing the night of any heat it might have held.
He knew he’d been stupid, but he and Mac went back, right back to school days. Fifty years they’d been friends. He and Jeanie were godparents to all three of Mac and Marjorie’s kids. He’d kept Mac’s secrets, covered for him with Marjorie when he was playing away from home, given him an alibi whenever the coppers were breathing down his neck so close that he’d needed one. Fifty years watching each other’s backs. You didn’t throw that away over a bit of money. And it wasn’t like Mac couldn’t afford it.
Bob figured he was just trying to teach him a lesson, to scare him into never doing anything like it again. And he wouldn’t. He’d get help. There was an organisation, Gamblers Anonymous, like AA but for folk addicted to betting. For Bob, it was the dogs. He’d had one good win and it had been his downfall. After that he was always chasing the next one, always believing it would turn around, telling himself that after one more good win he’d stop. The trouble was, to get a good win, he had to put on a good bet, and his money had run out.
Mac would probably let Big Liam finish what he started when he punched Bob to the floor in the club, dragged him outside and threw him in the back of the van, then tied his hands and put that stinking bag over his head. It had
only been lifted once since: to let him see that Mac was waiting for him when they got to the warehouse.
Mac might let Liam break something, make sure the message got across loud and clear to anyone else with designs on his millions: not even family get away with it. Bob shuffled on the concrete floor, the cold seeping into his old knee joints. He’d suffer for this. The arthritis was biting at him anyway and this would just make things worse. He heard Mac moving around behind him, stamping his feet and rubbing his gloved hands together. He couldn’t hear Big Liam, but he knew he was there, standing still and solid as a rock.
Liam didn’t say much. Liam listened. And obeyed.
‘You bloody fool,’ said Mac.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Bob.
‘Sorry doesn’t do it, not for this. Sorry doesn’t even begin to cover it.’
Bob heard the sorrow in Mac’s voice, and the determination, and adrenaline surged through his veins. Realisation hit him hard as fear wrapped itself around his heart and squeezed, robbed him of breath and stopped his tongue.
‘I can’t let it go, Bob, you must see that. You betrayed me.’ Mac walked over to where Liam was standing, the footsteps heading away from Bob. Then he came back and stood behind him. ‘It’ll be quick and clean,’ said Mac, ‘and I’ll do it myself. That’s the best I can do.’
‘Mac, no!’ Bob struggled to accept it. His childhood friend. He had never truly believed, not deep down, that it would ever come to this. ‘I’ll pay back every penny, with interest. I’ll sell the house. You can have it all, everything I own.’ He was tripping over the words in his haste to get them all out, to find the ones that would change Mac’s mind before it was too late.
‘Not good enough.’
Bob felt the barrel of the gun touch the back of his head and he whimpered. A small part of him still hoped Mac was just trying to scare him. He felt his bladder give and the fear was tinged with shame.
‘It’s not personal, Bob, you know that. I’ll miss you myself. But I can’t have people thinking I’m an easy touch or that I’ve gone soft.’
‘Mac—’
‘I’ll take care of Jeanie,’ said Mac, as the shot from the gun echoed through the warehouse. Bob crumpled to the floor and Mac put a second round in his head. The silence that followed was deafening.
Without speaking, Mac handed the gun to Big Liam and they walked out of the old warehouse. He nodded and Liam jumped in the van to drive back to the club. Mac’s driver stood by the rear door of the car and he opened it when he saw the men coming. Mac slumped in the back seat and the driver shut the door and climbed into the front.
‘Back to the club?’ he asked, watching Mac in the rear view mirror. Mac nodded and he fired the engine.
In the back of the car, Mac pushed the button to raise the screen between him and the driver. Opening a small cabinet, he took out a cut crystal glass and a flask and poured himself a scotch, then sat back in the seat, the leather soft as butter, cradling his form. As the car was guided expertly through the darkened streets, Mac brooded. No one knew what it was like to be him. No one understood the responsibility, the loneliness. The darkness inside.
Back at the club, the door was opened for him and Mac stepped out into the night air. Liam at his back, he walked into the club, up the stairs and into the bar. His men waited. He looked at them through blue eyes as cold as ice, taking in each face, seeing the respect, the fear.
‘Bob has retired from the firm,’ he said. ‘Someone organise flowers for Jeanie.’
BIO: Julie Morrigan lives on the coast in north-east England. Her short stories have appeared in print publications including Bullet, Out of the Gutter and Blink Ink, and online at such venues as A Twist of Noir, Thrillers, Killers & Chillers, At the Bijou, and Darkest Before the Dawn. She published her first e-books in 2011. Her website is: www.juliemorrigan.co.uk/
PARANOID
By
David Barber
Let me tell you a little story about something that happened to me. It all began when a new classroom assistant started. With me being the head of department it was decided that she help me for the first week or so.
When she walked into the classroom the whole world seemed to stop. I mean, even the girls were gobsmacked. Jenny Young was stunning: tall, slim and perfect in every way. Within 3 days we were fucking and it was the best sex I’d ever had in my life. I’m 42 and Jenny was 22. I’d forgotten what a firm pair of tits felt like.
To stop anyone finding out about us, Jenny decided to leave her job and within two weeks of seeing her she had moved in with me.
That’s when it all went wrong. Yes, wrong. I know, sex with a younger woman is fantastic but when it’s every night and it starts to affect your job – then it’s wrong. So I calmed things down and that’s when the paranoia set in.
‘Getting too old to keep it up, eh? Maybe I need someone younger, someone who can raise a real hard-on and not a pathetic attempt at one.’
No matter what kind of person you are or how hard you are, a woman’s words can hurt and hers cut to the bone. She was playing with my head and it was working.
At school I’d hear a couple of girls giggling as they walked past and I’d think they were directing it at me. In the staff room a group of teachers would be sat together. They’d just be chatting away and it would only take one of them to look at me and I’d be lost in an ocean of paranoid thoughts. It was getting bad. This woman was draining me of everything, including my sanity, and it was killing me.
I went to the doctor and he prescribed me some anti-depressants. I never told him the truth. I made some stuff up about money problems which, funnily enough, happened to be not too far from the truth.
It turned out that she was draining me of money as well as my sanity. Little did I know but she’d got herself a credit card in my name and address. The thing is, with all this chip and pin these days, it doesn’t matter whose name is on the card if all you want to do is draw out cash. She’d racked up a good few thousand.
I had to finish it with her. It was getting too much. Five months was feeling like a lifetime.
The final straw that broke this camel’s back came one breakfast.
I was sat at the kitchen table having some cereal. I’d had my medication (I’d been doubling up) and it was kicking in. The radio was on and I was flicking through the newspaper. My mind was elsewhere though. I was going to tell her to move out.
‘There you go.’ Jenny walked into the kitchen and dropped a bundle of envelopes onto the worktop. There were a few envelopes but I didn’t think the postman needed to roll them up with one of those annoying red elastic bands. A bill is a bill, Mr Postman, it doesn’t matter how it’s presented.
‘You know, some of those are yours. You could pay for a couple once in a while.’
I could feel my rage fighting against the medication.
‘I think you’ll find your name on all of those.’
The wrong buttons were being pushed.
‘And anyway,’ she said, opening her bathrobe to reveal her amazing body, ‘This is payment towards those bills. You get to have your wicked way with me - when you can get it up that is.’
My rage was winning but I couldn’t stop staring at her tits. Those firm, tanned mounds of pleasure. But they seemed different. Her nipples started changing in front of my eyes. They were turning into faces and they were laughing at me. Even her tits were mocking me. I blinked hard and looked at them again. They were back to normal.
‘You’re pathetic,’ I heard Jenny say as she walked out of the kitchen and up the stairs to our bedroom. I heard the door shut and then the sound that flipped me over the edge - laughter.
All my buttons were pressed at once and something blew in my head. I got up, grabbed the bundle of envelopes and ran upstairs.
‘You bitch! I want you out of my house now!’ I shouted and threw the bundle at her.
That was it. She was out of my life. It was as easy as that.
So, that’s my story.
It’s a cautionary tale isn’t it? Never trust a younger woman.
Right, that’s the bell, end of lunch time and to the classroom. We’re doing something this afternoon about being a model prisoner and doing your time ‘clean’, as they say.
I know what you’re thinking, prison? Yes, that’s right. I’m doing fifteen years for murder under the diminished responsibility tag. I’ll probably be out in eight to ten though. It turned out, in my over medicated rage, that I’d picked up the bread knife instead of the bundle of envelopes. Hit her right in the throat with it. I never knew I could throw a knife with such accuracy and power.
Unfortunately, Jenny bled out on my bedroom floor before I’d realised what I’d done.
See you later.
BIO: David Barber was born and bred in Manchester , England , but now lives in Crieff , Scotland with his wife, Lisa, and their two daughters. He has been published on numerous e-zines, including Thriller, Killers ‘n’ Chillers, A Twist of Noir, The New Flesh and Blink Ink. He is currently working on a few projects including a novel. He is the editor of The Flash Fiction Offensive and can be found lurking at http://davidbarberfiction.blogspot.com
NIGHTS IN WHITE SATIN
By
McDroll
Caitlin’s friends were spot on, she was running away, but she knew that she couldn’t live in the family home any longer and the constant buzz of city life was driving her insane. Greta told her she was daft heading out to the middle of nowhere but when did her sister ever understand or show the slightest bit of sympathy? A wee island in the middle of the sea, that sounded pretty good, but it turns out that even that wasn’t far enough away.
‘The Anchorage’ was in the middle of a rambling, bleak street in the centre of Bowmore and was yet another old whitewashed cottage with yellow painted windows that visitors to the island thought were ‘quaint’. The smoke from peat fires choked the air alongside the stink of whisky and the constant dampness got right into your bones.