Near To The Knuckle presents Rogue: The second anthology

by Keith Nixon

  “Those pills have muddled your mind,” she said as she sat back on the chair, the leather wheezing in time with his breathing apparatus.

  “Ha! Shows what you know!” he challenged her. “It’s in my room, behind the photo of Khruschev and me in 1964.” Ginny looked at him, not quite sure this wasn’t another one of his twisted jokes. “Go on, go and have a look.”

  “Okay,” Ginny said, rising to the bait. “I will.” She got up from the chair and disappeared from the room. He sat in his chair and waited. It wasn’t long before he got his reward. He heard her scream clearly from the living room.

  ***

  Everything she had been told, everything she had read, everything she had seen — none of it could have prepared her for this as she sat at the dining room table and stared at it. It was every bit what she would have expected of the stereotypical little green man — albeit in a weak grey colour — an oversized head that looked much to large to be supported by the thin, spindly limbs and a distended, swollen stomach. It was probably no more than about three feet tall when erect, yet it was in a bizarre foetal position inside the fluid within the Erlenmeyer flask. Ginny felt ill as she stared at it.

  “Creepy, ain’t it?” He asked. All she could do was nod. “There were four of them — two dead at the scene of the crash; he died a few years later. The other one helped to design the stealth bomber.”

  “And you kept it?” Ginny asked. He nodded. “Why?”

  “Why not?” he replied. “Besides, it’s worth some money, especially as the economy isn’t what it used to be.” He looked at it. “That little critter is going to fund my retirement, once I get out of this chair.”

  The words rang around Ginny’s head for the rest of the day.

  And soon, she began to formulate a plan.

  ***

  Nicky was the nurse assigned to check on his respirator equipment once a week. She was due to arrive tomorrow, giving Ginny a window of opportunity. Not only had she got to steal the Erlenmeyer flask, but she had to make sure that she disappeared along with it. Shooting a former President was as bad as shooting the serving one — and there were people who would pay serious money to see him dead — so this was the only way to do it.

  By the time Nicky arrived it was mid afternoon and the sun was bearing down on the house. Ginny opened the door to her — Nicky’s beaming smile almost acted like solar panels. Ginny wished she had been wearing sunglasses when she greeted her.

  “Good afternoon Agent Harris,” Nicky said as she practically bounced into the room. “How is the patient today?”

  “He had a bad night,” Ginny replied. “He’s in the bedroom.” Nicky took a step forward towards the bedroom. She started to turn around.

  “Hang on, I’ve forgotten…” Nicky turned around to come face to face with the barrel of the pistol. “Oh.”

  “It’s nothing personal,” Ginny said. “I just really need your body.” The words finished as she pulled the trigger. The gunshot echoed around as Nicky’s body slumped to the floor, her blonde hair now a bloody mess. “Okay,” Ginny said. “Now for the second part.”

  ***

  He watched her as she removed the flask from the room and began to switch off the machines that powered his breathing apparatus. His eyes blazed at her with anger and a fury she hadn’t seen since she had watched a videotape of his speech about ‘the Red Menace’ in 1963.

  “You won’t get away with it.” His voice was wheezing again.

  “No?” Ginny said as she made sure the window was locked. “Well, my supervisor isn’t due to check in until Saturday, and by then I’ll be well away and this will be just a tragic accident.” She made a few more cursory checks around the room before making her way to the door. “You know, I’d like to say that it’s been a pleasure working for you sir, but my mother taught me never to lie.”

  ***

  The first flames caught quickly — then they found the gas main and the flimsy building exploded in a fireball. Ginny smiled as she thought about the way her supervisors would react. The engine of the car roared into life as she pulled away from the blazing inferno. She flipped open her cell phone and dialled a number she had heard the other night.

  “Is that the producers of the Opie and Anthony show? Are you guys still offering that ten million dollar prize for proof of extra–terrestrial life?” she asked as the car idled at the end of the road. She glanced across to the suitcase on the passenger seat that concealed the flask and its unearthly contents. “Is that payment in cash or by cheque? Oh good, we should schedule a meeting as I think I have something you might be interested in…”

  DOCTOR BITCH

  Walter Conley

  Debbie wasn’t fat, but she walked like a fat man. She stood 6'1" and weighed 145 lbs in her leathers and workboots. She had red hair, long and straight except for the bangs, which fell in a jagged line to her black, tattooed eyebrows. Tonight she wore heavy mascara and black lipstick to match.

  In Sam’s eyes—watching from the edge of the makeshift stage—Debbie was as fearsome as she was beautiful.

  She walked in a slow, exaggerated stride, leading with her belly, chin at a tilt, elbows back, hands flailing outward. Sam gasped as she clutched her bass halfway up the neck and threw the strap over her head. The bass hung low, metal style, against her thighs. She played for Doctor Bitch, Sam’s favorite band. She also sang back–up. He squirmed over how close she was to him now, posing herself behind a mic stand.

  “Punch me in the face!” Sam yelled.

  A woman next to him, middle–aged and dressed like a bankrupt preppy, said, “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  “Maybe later,” Debbie said.

  He beamed at the disapproving woman, who turned on her heel and left.

  The drummer, guitarist and singer took the stage, but Sam hardly noticed them. He was enthralled by Debbie, his own personal rock goddess, looming over him like the Angel of Love and Death. Pots of colored light flashed around her head as the lightman tested them.

  He didn’t notice the man who had just walked into the club, either.

  ***

  The man’s name was Travis. Until a month ago, Debbie had been living in Travis’ apartment at the Riveriew on Church Street. She’d been his girlfriend and had also played bass in Travis’ band, Gypsy Mothra, dividing her time between that and Doctor Bitch. Bitch was the superior outfit and Travis knew it; although they’d only been gigging half a year, they already had more fans and more recordings for sale online. Travis, resentful and anxious that his own band would soon break up, did the unthinkable. He gave Debbie an ultimatum. Quit Doctor Bitch to focus on his music or they were through. As soon as the words left his mouth, Travis regretted saying it. You didn’t test someone like Debbie.

  “Go fuck yourself,” was her reply.

  He begged her to stay while she packed, telling her it was only a joke, really, that he hadn’t meant it, asking if she would please reconsider.

  “All right.” She squinted and looked into the distance, then said, “I’ve thought about it, Travis, and you can go fuck yourself.”

  She knocked him on her way out of the apartment and his sorry life.

  Once he heard Debbie hard–heel it down the stairs, heard the door to the street open and close, he dropped to the floor and cried. Travis cried all night.

  At one point, around 2:00AM, the renter below him yelled, “Hey! Shut the fuck up!”

  “Go fuck yourself!” Travis yelled back. He remembered Debbie saying it to him and cried some more.

  The next day, he tried calling, but she wouldn’t answer. On the second call he found himself blocked. He drove Wellesport looking for her. None of Debbie’s friends would say where she had gone.

  So it was over, just like that. Their relationship and his pathetic existence. He was an ignorant asshole. He’d never meet another woman like Debbie as long as he lived. How could anyone compare to her? He should have let her play in Doctor Fucking Bitch and dealt with it and k
ept his stupid mouth shut. Now he was alone. He’d always be alone. With a harem that didn’t include Debbie, he’d still feel alone.

  “Goddamn you,” he said to himself.

  Unable to sleep the second night, either, suffering a panic attack worse than the crying jag, Travis decided to kill himself. Then he thought: Why not take her with him? Maybe the serial killers were right. The Soul Collector ones he saw on TV. Maybe if you killed people, they’d belong to you forever in the afterlife? Which afterlife? It didn’t matter—he’d gladly suffer eternal damnation with her at his side.

  He logged onto his PC as the sun was rising. He searched for her on the social media sites, but she’d blocked or unfriended him there, as well. On a whim, he checked the Facefuck page for Doctor Bitch. He wasn’t blocked yet. They were playing this weekend at the Shamrock Cafe. Friday night. Tomorrow. Holy shit, tomorrow.

  His aching heart leapt at the idea of pulling a murder–suicide onstage that would result in them joined for all eternity.

  He looked up murder–suicides and read about them. He looked up the killing of musicians onstage and that’s when he saw the Pantera video. He’d forgotten about that. Dimebag Darrel gunned down in the middle of a performance. Wouldn’t that be perfect? Kill her while she was playing for Doctor Bitch, happily thumping away on her bass. He’d kill her with a shotgun. Travis’ father had one. Then he’d jam it underneath his chin, blow her dying lips a kiss and blow the top of his head off.

  “Good idea,” he said.

  Dad used to hunt, but didn’t anymore. He’d put the shotgun in the detached shed in back of the family house. Travis drove there, two blocks west, sneaked into the shed, stole the Mossberg and a box of shells and raced back to his apartment. He cleaned the gun with a Doctor Bitch T–shirt, then loaded it. He hefted it and watched that video over and over again, looping it, dozing and twitching awake to see his destiny unfolding onscreen. Night passed into day and the day skipped by. It stunned him when looked at the time on the monitor and realized the show was about to start.

  ***

  Sam didn’t become aware of Travis until someone else noticed him. The person looking frowned. Sam turned to see Travis skulking along the wall. Debbie’s asshole ex–boyfriend and the guitarist from Gypsy Mothra. Travis’ hair was greasy, his eyes red–rimmed and puffy. He wore a trenchcoat, but his right arm wasn’t in the sleeve—it was inside the coat, which was bulging.

  “Oh, my god,” Sam said. “My goddess.”

  He called out a warning to Debbie, but the band was into a cover of “Trashed” by Sabbath, ear–splitting loud, Debbie lost in the moment.

  Sam rushed down the lip of the stage. A pack of teenagers obstructed him near the end. He watched, feeling panicked and helpless, as Travis angled toward the steps that led onto the platform.

  “Travis, don’t!”

  Travis couldn’t hear him. The man was not only deafened by the music, he was in a trance, on a fucking mission. He was going to kill Debbie. He climbed the stairs.

  Other people in the crowd saw Sam jumping and waving, saw Travis walk onstage and open his coat. They began to scream and press toward the back of the club. Bitch’s drummer stopped playing. The other three band members looked at him, confused, then also stopped. Their attention—like everyone else’s in the place—was drawn by Travis.

  Debbie didn’t say a thing. She held Travis’ stare and shook her head.

  Travis levelled the shotgun.

  Sam, still unable to reach the steps, crawled onstage, scrambling to his feet in a run.

  Travis jerked his lead arm and there was a terrible thunk.

  Debbie said, “Sam,” and he glanced at her for an instant, one glorious instant, then back at Travis as the shotgun went off and pain cut into Sam’s face and neck and left shoulder and the two men collided. Sam’s momentum swept them into the air, tumbling onto the steps. Travis’ head cracked a riser and he rolled away, shrieking, pounced on by the crowd.

  The lights faded to darkness.

  The noise faded to a hum and then silence.

  Sam drifted in a colorless, painless vacuum for what seemed hours.

  He felt a sharp pain on his left cheek. Either his eyes fluttered open or his view was changing. Pain, again. Light and noise flooding him. He saw Debbie leaning over his face, straddling his chest. She looked ethereal. Sam’s Dark Angel. Her lips were moving, but nothing came out. He watched her mouth and tongue and pinpointed her voice in the rumbling—a mighty sound, like a waterfall in his ears.

  “Stay with me, Sam,” Debbie said.

  She slapped his face a third time.

  Ecstasy.

  And he said, “Have I died? Are we in heaven?”

  For Astrid ‘Artistikem’ Cruz

  THE DELIVERY MAN

  Bill Baber

  Ray Pinelli woke up in a shitty mood. He didn’t get laid the night before because he was drunk and his wife locked him out of the bedroom. She had been up his ass lately about his drinking, said it was getting out of control. He had a stressful job he told her. Guy like him that runs a successful business deserves a couple of stiff belts after a long day. She responded by telling him he acted like a fuckin’ slob when he was half gassed. She was also busting his balls about his weight. He would have gone to see his squeeze Angie but she lived across the river in the city and he was too drunk to drive from Hoboken through the Lincoln Tunnel so he slept on the couch – the kind of couch that looks nice but not worth a damn to sleep on – so in the morning his back and his head both hurt like hell and he was pissed because he hadn’t gotten his rocks off.

  After taking a long, hot shower and dressing in a nice, tailored fifteen hundred dollar Armani — which he had to admit was getting a little snug causing him to think maybe he should cut back on the booze – he slipped on a pair of Italian loafers then left the house and drove his El Dorado the six blocks to Amarsi, the little restaurant that served as a front for his bookmaking, loan sharking and other criminal operations. Sal and Donnie, his enforcers, were both already there. Sal was big, really big. He intimidated people and had a tendency to not speak unless it was required. His actions spoke louder than words anyway. Donnie on the other hand, was short and stocky. He was gregarious and cheerful. He put people at ease, until he hurt them. Ray ordered a double espresso and a Canoli from the cute little thing he had hired to run the counter, thinking maybe he could talk her into a blowjob after he took care of some business and went into the office.

  His day got worse from there. Donnie came in and told him that Ralph Catalano, a barber who owed six large was in the wind. The bastard’s shop was even closed and that told Ray he might have skipped town. “You find that fuck,” he told Donnie. “And when you do, cut off a couple of his fingers. Make sure the bastard never gives another hair cut. You know what I mean?”

  He drank the espresso and ordered another. He wasn’t feeling any better.

  Then Sal tells him that Jimmy ‘The Douche’ Scalzinni took the Jets and the points yesterday and they didn’t cover. What’s worse he says is that Jimmy is now over twenty grand in arrears. He had promised to pay last night if he lost and he ain’t been seen.

  “Go get some money from him; he’ll come up with somethin’,” Ray tells Sal. “Jimmy always comes through after you inflict a little damage.”

  ***

  Jimmy Scalzinni knows what’s coming — he’s been down this road more times than he cares to remember. And the beat downs from Pinelli’s crew keep getting increasingly worse the further in the hole he gets. What the hell’s wrong with that guy? He thinks. For Chrissake, when I hit the Pick Six at Belmont for 200 thousand the first thing I did after I left the track was pay the son of a bitch.

  This current losing streak was a long one, Jimmy couldn’t pick his nose with both hands let alone pick the winner of a football game Hell, it had gotten so bad he’d lost a show bet in a three horse race. When his bad luck showed no signs of coming to an end, Jimmy had tried to tell Pinelli he was a
businessman, and sometimes you had to incur losses. Pinelli just told him to make a payment on the vig by the next day or he would send Sal to collect. When Jimmy was gone, Ray just laughed and said to Sal and Donnie, “You believe that fuck? Fuckin’ businessman. He’s a fuckin’ degenerate gambler is what he is.”

  Jimmy paces around his apartment, he is thin, wiry and like a lamp filament, burns with nervous energy. The dumpy little place has been home since his wife left him and took his two kids to Florida seven years ago. Looking around, he sees grime streaked windows, dirty clothes scattered around and piles of old racing forms. He wonders how the fuck he got here. He used to have a good job as a rep for the Teamsters. They had a nice house, life was good. Jimmy went to the track once in a while, won a couple of bucks and lost a few. Bet a few football games. He had better luck with those and for a few years got on a pretty good roll. Then his luck ran out only he didn’t know it. He kept chasing, started making stupid bets and tossing everything he knew about wagering out the window. That’s when he started getting in the hole to Pinelli. The first time Sal roughed him up he promised his wife he was done. He didn’t make a bet for six months. But then football season started again. After the second Sunday, he was down eight large and couldn’t pay. Sal came in their house in the middle of the night and beat the shit of Jimmy in front of the kids; broke his none and four ribs, his wife and kids were gone the next day. He hadn’t seen them since.

  Fuck Pinelli; he says to himself, I’m done with this shit. Nobody is ever kickin’ my ass again. He screwed a silencer onto a .357 automatic and laid a sharpened hunting knife on the table next to him. He’ll take care of whomever Pinelli sends… but as he waits, a bigger plan begins to hatch. He wonders if he can pull it all off. At this point, he has nothing to lose. One way or another, he may end up dead. He decides to take the chance. He’s a gambler, knows the odds aren’t good but what the hell. He has a hunch; he can see the long shot crossing the wire.