by Chris Mattix
Sunday, September 16, 2012: 11:40 a.m.
BOOM!
The blast from Roy’s 12-gauge rang out and echoed through Blue Cloud’s rolling hills. Sent an old coffee can flying. Roy turned to Jerry, grinning like a boy while the can still hung in the air.
"Hot damn! You see that shit? Still a hell of a shot in my old age."
"You are at that." Jerry sat on a small boulder sipping a tall can of Pabst as Roy racked another round into his shotgun.
"See if you can’t top that, old man," Roy said as he passed the gun to Jerry.
Jerry held the shotgun on his lap. Took another big swallow of cheap beer and hopped down from his perch. With shaky hands he took aim at an identical can. As he looked down the barrel he caught a glimpse of Greta’s grave. Thought about his early morning in these same hills. He forced the thought out of his mind, re-sighted the can, and squeezed the trigger. The recoil pushed the stock deep into his shoulder. He already ached all over from his run-in with the sleazeball boys. One more bruise to add to his growing collection. He’d missed the can.
"Well would you look at that. Never thought I’d see the day I’d out-shoot your ass so thoroughly." Roy was beaming. Jerry had always been a better shot. Jerry dropped the shotgun to his side and stared at the still standing coffee can. His hands were shaky and his chest heaved with pent-up emotion. A dull thud caught Roy’s attention as Jerry and the shotgun hit the rocky soil.
"You all right buddy?" Roy said as he walked toward his friend.
"I think I’m losin’ it, Roy." Jerry held his head in his hands. Tears began to form behind his tired eyes.
"Look, I know you been through hell lately. What with Greta leavin’ and all. But you got people who’s worried about you. Who care about you." Roy bent over and placed a hand on Jerry’s shoulder. He cringed at the familiar touch.
"I’m in trouble Roy. Trouble so big I can’t begin to figure it out." Jerry was sobbing now. Taking in deep, scattered breaths as he wept.
"What kind of trouble? Let me help"
"This ain’t the kind of trouble you want, Roy."
"You let me be the judge of that. Now, tell me what happened."
Jerry gave Roy the details of the previous night. Told him about Greta’s sudden change. Her drinking and drug use. How he’d been the crazy fucker outside Jester’s. How he’d grabbed Greta and forced her into the truck. And finally, how she’d died. Roy sat and listened, expressionless. When Jerry finished he looked up at Roy. Looked at his closest friend through eyes ravaged by tears and lack of sleep. He looked at Roy and waited for a response.
"This don’t make any sense." Roy stared at Jerry, confused. "Jerry, Greta left you. Two months ago. Don’t you remember? She’s been livin’ with her sister in Great Falls."
Jerry didn’t know what to say.
"So the fact that you’re telling me that Greta is lyin’ under a heap of dirt not forty yards from where we’re sittin’, well, that just don’t add up."
"I know… I can barely believe it myself, but it’s the truth. I snapped. Never knew what I was doing until it was all over." Jerry let out a solitary sob. Wiped a tear from his cheek.
"No. What don’t make sense is that it’s Greta lying in that grave. Couldn’t be. I talked to her this morning before I saw you at The Phoenix. She wanted me to check up on you. Make sure you were doing okay."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Jerry didn’t know what to believe. Had this all been a dream? No, the memories were too fresh, too vivid for this to be untrue.
"Jerry, who the fuck is in that grave?"
AUTHOR BIOS
SHANNON BARBER lives in Seattle and writes things while snorting lines of fine Pacific Northwest Coffee. One of those three things is a straight lie. Her most recent work has been seen in mad swirl and Aberration Labryinth. To see more of her work please visit her website at Shannon Writes.
EDWARD HAGELSTEIN lives in Tampa, Florida. His fiction has appeared in The Harbinger, Sundog Lit, Pithead Chapel, A Twist of Noir, Drunken Boat, The Whistling Fire and Phoebe.
ROB W. HART is the associate publisher for MysteriousPress.com and the class director at LitReactor. He's the author of The Last Safe Place: A Zombie Novella, and his short stories have appeared in Shotgun Honey, Crime Factory, and Needle: A Magazine of Noir. You can find his website at www.robwhart.com.
ED KURTZ is the author of two horror/thriller novels, Bleed (Abattoir Press) and Control (Thunderstorm Books). His short fiction has appeared in Dark Moon Digest, Shotgun Honey, Beat to a Pulp, and the anthology Mutation Nation. He recently sold a novelette to Psychos, a new anthology from Black Dog & Leventhal and edited by John Skipp, and has fiction forthcoming in Needle: a Magazine of Noir, Nightscapes Vol. 1, Horror Factory, Blood Rites (Blood Bound Books) and Shades of Blue and Gray (Prime Books). He is also a contributing writer for Paracinema Magazine.
BRIAN LEOPOLD is an Emmy-award winning television writer, producer, and documentarian whose career has recently taken a turn for the weird. One of his short stories was recognized in the Ernest Hemingway Short Story Contest, and he is a member of Pennwriters, a loosely organized collection of writers working in the state of Pennsylvania. Leopold is currently putting the finishing touches on his latest crime novel, A Hard Fall, a thriller set in Las Vegas.
CHRIS MATTIX was born in Montana, received a masters degree in North Dakota, and recently moved to Austin, TX because MT and ND are cold as fuck. He works as a bookseller and is one of the founders of Slagdrop.com. He runs a mystery blog for the independent book store BookPeople, and reads more crime fiction than any one man should. His writing has been featured in daydreams where he makes enough money to live comfortably solely on his writing.
Originally from Boston, CHRIS MURPHY received his MFA from Arkansas, and currently teaches at a small university in eastern Oklahoma. He's got a story coming out in the next issue of Savage Kick and has an earlier story about a dog in heat published in The MFA Monthly. That's the entirety of his publishing history.
JUSTIN PORTER was born and raised in New York City. His fiction has appeared in Thuglit, Demolition Mag, Plots With Guns, Pulp Pusher, Steampunk Tales and the anthologies Sex, Thugs and Rock & Roll, and Blood, Guts and Whiskey. His articles have appeared in The New York Times and can be found at portersnotebook.tumblr.com, where he posts new fiction regularly.
TODD ROBINSON (Editor) is the creator and Chief Editor of Thuglit. His writing has appeared in Blood & Tacos, Plots With Guns, Needle Magazine, Shotgun Honey, Strange, Weird, and Wonderful, Out of the Gutter, Pulp Pusher, Grift, Demolition Magazine, CrimeFactory and the anthologies Lost Children: Protectors, and Danger City. He has been nominated three times for the Derringer Award, short-listed for Best American Mystery Stories, selected for Writers Digest's Year's Best Writing 2003 and won the inaugural Bullet Award in June 2011. The first collection of his short stories, Dirty Words is now available and his debut novel The Hard Bounce is available from Tyrus Books.
ALLISON GLASGOW (Editor) hates ellipses….
JULIE MCCARRON (Editor) is a celebrity ghostwriter with three New York Times bestsellers to her credit. Her books have appeared on every major entertainment and television talk show; they have been featured in Publishers Weekly and excerpted in numerous magazines including People. Prior to collaborating on celebrity bios, Julie was a book editor for many years. Julie started her career writing press releases and worked in the motion picture publicity department of Paramount Pictures and for Chasen & Company in Los Angeles. She also worked at General Publishing Group in Santa Monica and for the Dijkstra Literary Agency in Del Mar before turning to editing/writing full-time. She lives in Southern California.
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Table of Contents
Copyrights
A Message from Big Daddy Thug
A Good Marriage
Happy Ending
Gato Negro
With One Stone
Killer, Duck, and The Boys
One More Day Can't Hurt
Vidalia
Jerry’s Dead Wife
AUTHOR BIOS