"Not until you shoot your load."
"If you insist." He set the revolver down on the nightstand and lay back on the bed.
Heather took his growing erection slowly into her mouth, swirling the head and shaft with her tongue. She placed her hand over his balls. He grabbed her face, urging her on. Heather felt his balls tighten when he came, warm and sweet in her mouth.
Charlie sat up, kissed her deeply, and reached for the gun. It was surprisingly heavy in his hand, and he struggled to hold it level.
She licked her lips. "We'll take turns. You go first. Spin the wheel. There are six chambers and only one bullet. I love those odds. Don't you?"
"You bet I do. There's nothing more exhilarating than the element of surprise. Wouldn't you agree?" He gave it a whirl while she watched.
"Absolutely." Heather clapped her hands. "Now, put the gun to your head and hold it steady while I pull the trigger. Don't blink. I might be the last woman you ever see. Savor the moment."
"Anything for you." Charlie drank Heather in while he honored her request. The cold muzzle pinched his temple. He blinked when the hammer clicked on an empty chamber, sending a blast of compressed air straight to his temple. Feeling cocky, he smirked and handed her the gun. "Your turn. This is if you're up to the challenge."
Heather licked her lips and gave the cylinder a good spin with the tip her manicured red nail. When it stopped, she put the gun to her head, right between her eyes Charlie placed his hand on top of hers and, together, they squeezed. The weapon kicked, catching him off guard. He cursed when he realized what he'd done. When the bullet pierced Heather's forehead and pierced her skull, her bright green eyes widened, full of pain and wonder. She landed flat on her back with a soft thud. Blood gushed, a crimson, wet rush onto the pristine sheets.
Charlie gawked at Heather's ruined face—her blood and brains splattered on the bedroom wall—while he recalled the loud pop moments ago and felt the weight of the revolver still clutched tightly in his hand. He screamed, tossed the smoking gun on the bed, and hightailed it home.
* * *
Standing with his legs spread and his feet planted firmly on the smooth concrete floor of his garage, Brad Moore pressed the eerily familiar cold muzzle of the .38 snub-nosed Smith & Wesson revolver against Charlie Dent's forehead and grinned, revealing two rows of perfectly straight, Chiclet-like teeth.
His stance, typical for a cop and expert marksman, set Charlie on edge.
"Do you know what I have here, Charlie?" He released the safety and cocked the gun. A nerve-wracking click echoed loudly in the small space.
He studied the weapon, found it eerily familiar, couldn't help but think of Heather. "It looks like a gun," Charlie said matter-of-factly, calmly, not at all the way that a man staring death in the face ought to reply. Goose bumps appeared on his smooth, tan skin, revealing his fragile state of mind. He fought a wave of nausea, hot and vile, aggravated by the strong stench of gun oil that stung his nostrils.
Brad nodded, a maniacal grin plastered on his face. "It's that and so much more."
Charlie raised his eyebrows, biding his time. "What do you mean and why are you pointing it at me?" He shifted, trying to get comfortable in a rickety, wooden chair. Coarse ropes bit into the tender flesh of his ankles and wrists, making them throb dully.
Brad laughed. "You know exactly why. Don't play dumb with me."
He sighed. "I haven't got a clue."
"Have you seen Heather lately?" Brad pulled the gun away long enough to polish it with his expensive button-down shirt while Charlie watched.
Charlie rolled his eyes. He took a deep breath and said, "I might have. This is a small town. You never know who you might run into."
Brad jammed the gun against Charlie's forehead. Beads of sweat formed on and ran down Charlie's face in sticky torrents as he shrieked.
"Go ahead and scream. No one can hear you except me. I had my garage soundproofed so we can't hear my son Jacob and his band when they jam—I never hear a peep."
Charlie stopped screaming.
"See this gun cylinder? It's like a roulette wheel. Round and round she goes; where she stops nobody knows!" Brad gave it a spin. It clicked and whirled around before stopping abruptly. He stared at the shiny, steel blue revolver, fascinated by its finality.
"Six chambers, one bullet. Looks like the odds are in your favor." Brad held the sleek gun in his open palm for his captive to inspect, which he reluctantly did. "The bullet's in there, all right, but the question is where?"
Charlie stared at the cold concrete beneath his feet.
Point-blank, Brad posed a question: "Have you ever held a gun in your hand, Charlie?"
Charlie frowned, shook his head.
"You don't know what you're missing. It's a real kick, better than sex, get some action whenever you want, absolute power in the palm of your hand." Brad tightened his grip. The gun wavered. "Heather's dead. Your prints were all over the gun, hers too. What the fuck?"
"I'm really sorry." Charlie stared at his feet. "It was just an innocent game, I swear. I had no idea the gun was loaded."
"I don't buy it." Brad paced back and forth. "Are you a gambling man, Charlie?"
Charlie shook his head. "Stakes are too high. I hate to lose."
Brad laughed again, louder this time. "Then why did you sleep with my wife? Did you feel lucky, willing to risk it all for a good fuck?"
"What? I—"
"Don't be shy."
Charlie gasped, guilty as charged. "I'm an impulsive guy. I acted on a feeling I haven't felt in a long time: love."
"Wrong, I think you mean lust—there's a big difference. You were thinking with the wrong head when you bedded Heather, my friend." He pointed the gun at Charlie's crotch.
Charlie expected Brad to pull the trigger, depriving him of his manhood with a single blow. Brad couldn't—no, wouldn't do that—would he? He wanted to make Charlie squirm. "Heather may have loved you in college, but her tastes are refined now. Why do you think she married me?"
"Because you're a sure bet, safe and secure."
Brad glared at Charlie. "That's pretty blunt."
"It's true." Charlie shrugged. "Then there's me. I'm passionate and reckless. Heather craved excitement and knew where to find it."
Brad balled his free hand into a fist and pointed the gun at Charlie's face once more. "You weren't the first guy I caught. My wife had a wandering eye, you see. I did my best to overlook her transgressions, but I know you. That changes everything."
Charlie stared at Brad, grappling with harsh reality.
"How did you end up in bed?" Brad towered over him, obscuring Charlie's haphazard thoughts. "Let me guess. Heather talked you into keeping her company while I was out of town because she was lonely. You jumped at the chance without thinking twice. Isn't that right? Now that's poor planning."
"You're absolutely right." Charlie squinted. His eyes teared, blurring his vision.
"Round and round she goes. Where she stops, nobody knows!" Brad spun the cylinder that held his captive's fate. "Care to guess?"
"Have I got a choice?" Charlie's eyes locked on the proverbial wheel until it stopped spinning.
The gun loomed inches from his face. "You're not a coward, are you, Charlie?"
"N-n-n-o-o-o." He blinked and swallowed hard.
"Funny, you don't sound too sure of yourself and why do you look so scared?" Brad shook his head. "Are you afraid to die?"
"Isn't everybody?" Charlie's eyes darted around the remarkably tidy garage, finally setting on Brad.
He shrugged. "I suppose, but I'm not the one staring down the barrel of a gun."
Charlie bit his lip. "Let's forget I ever laid a hand on Heather, okay? I'd take it all back if I could."
"I'm afraid I can't do that, Charlie. Your half-hearted apology can't bring Heather back. What's done is done." Brad spun the cylinder once more for good measure. "It's time to pay. I mean play."
Charlie shifted, his restraints dug deeper
.
Brad fondled the revolver's cylinder. "A wheel is spun. The players put their chips down on a number. If the ball lands in the slot that contains their number, they claim the jackpot. If it doesn't, they lose everything. It's all or nothing. Do you understand?"
"I think so." Brad started to shake uncontrollably.
Charlie watched him tremble and tightened his grip on the gun until his knuckles turned white. "This isn't Vegas. Your life is on the line; you can't afford to lose. It's time to try your luck, Charlie. All bets are off." This time, he pressed the revolver's cold muzzle against Charlie's forehead and caressed the trigger lovingly with his finger. "Is Lady Luck on your side? Only one way to find out...."
Charlie shut his eyes, tight, steeled himself for the inevitable.
Brad pulled the trigger. The hammer clicked on an empty chamber, sending a blast of compressed air straight to his temple.
Charlie flinched; his eyes snapped open. "I must be luckier than I thought." His voice rattled.
"Too bad Heather isn't here to see this. I think she would have enjoyed the show. Don't you?" Brad twirled the gun between his fingers like a seasoned outlaw.
Charlie licked his parched lips. "It's hard to say."
"Are you telling me you don't know what my wife likes even though you fucked her?" He folded his arms.
"That's right." His voice cracked under the strain.
Brad scratched his head. "Right about what? That you slept with my wife or that you don't know how to please her?"
"Both, I suppose." Charlie frowned. "Don't you want to give it a whirl? That way we've both got a fair shot."
"You think I'm crazy enough to hand you the gun?" Brad wiped a smudge off the gun's barrel with his shirt, ever the perfectionist.
"Not crazy, just playing the game." Charlie nervously smirked.
Brad gave the cylinder another spin and stared at the gun, deep in thought. "What have I got to lose?"
"Do you think the chamber is full, or empty this time around, Brad?"
"Only one way to find out." Brad leered at him, put the gun to his head, and squeezed the trigger. The gun kicked in his hand, launching the only bullet in the chamber. He hit the cold concrete with a soft thud.
"Un-fucking-believable."
Amy Grech has sold over one hundred stories and three poems to various anthologies and magazines including: Apex Digest, Fear on Demand, Funeral Party 2, Inhuman Magazine, Needle: A Magazine of Noir, The Flash Fiction Offensive, The Horror Express, Space & Time, The Brutarian, Zombie CSU, and many others. Damnation Books published her second collection, Blanket of White.
She has a story forthcoming in The Uninvited Magazine, exclusively for the iPad. Amy is an Active Member of the Horror Writers Association who lives in Brooklyn. Visit her website: http://www.crimsonscreams.com. Follow her on Twitter: http://twitter.com/amy_grech.
Bull's-Eye View
Wayne D. Dundee
"I wonder," William Thunderbringer said casually, around the forkful of cole slaw and deep-fried walleye he had just pushed into his mouth, "what brings a big ticket Louisiana hit man up here to our neck of the woods?"
Not one to process things quite as coolly as Thunderbringer, I froze with my own loaded fork part way to my mouth. "Say again?"
"Don't make it obvious," he replied between chews, "but glance around when you get the chance. Just to the right of the juke box over there, guy with slicked back hair and a big floppy nose like a gibbon monkey. Name's Dale Garma. He's a hitter from the New Orleans area. Works mostly for Po'boy Meechum down there. Also been known to hire himself out for freelance jobs once in awhile."
I didn't question the accuracy of the claims Thunderbringer was making, nor did I ask how he knew these things. He knows stuff that I don't want to know how he knows.
Our light-hearted little exchange was taking place one Friday evening in the Lassoed Walleye Saloon, a tin-roofed honkytonk tavern on the shore of No Name Bay, Lake McConaughy, west central Nebraska. No Name Bay is home turf for me, residing as I do in cabin number six of the No Name Bay General Store and Lodge located on the opposite side of the boat ramp from the Lassoed Walleye. My name's Joe Hannibal; I carry a PI ticket and run a private security patrol serving homes and businesses around the perimeter of popular Lake Mac. Thunderbringer had driven out for the weekend from Denver, where he lives and works these days as a bounty hunter—oops, excuse me, make that fugitive recovery specialist—for an outfit officially called Heller Enterprises but more commonly referred to as the Mile High Manhunters. Our history together doesn't go back all that far, but the resulting friendship is as solid as it gets. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with somebody and throwing lead against return fire tends to forge a unique bond.
I got the chance to take a peek at Thunderbringer's hit man when my ladyfriend, Abby Bridger, returned to our table following a trip to the powder room. Standing to hold her chair for her allowed me to covertly scan the room, lingering an extra clock tick on Dale Garma as I did so. He was easy to spot from Thunderbringer's description. He was seated alone at a square-topped two-up table, back to the wall, Jesse James style, so nothing or nobody could come up unexpectedly behind him. He was wearing expensive leather sandals, no socks, blue jeans, and a flowered Guayaberra shirt pushed a little tight in front by the beginning of a middle-aged pot. The slicked back hair appeared to be thinning in contrasting proportion to the thickening paunch. In short, except for the oversized nose, he was about as average-looking as a guy could get.
I sat back down and said to Thunderbringer, "Not all that menacing from the outside."
"What's not menacing?" Abby wanted to know.
"Nobody pays the guy to look dangerous," Thunderbringer said, shrugging.
"Good thing," I allowed.
"Who's not getting paid to look dangerous?" Abby said. "What are you two talking about?"
The Walleye's all-u-can-eat Friday night fish fry was doing a brisk level of business tonight, especially considering we were now past the peak of summer. The resulting chatter of other conversations taking place around us and the warble of the jukebox created enough offsetting noise so that we were able to talk freely with little concern for being overheard by neighboring diners. Thunderbringer went ahead and gave Abby the same quick rundown on Dale Garma that he'd given me.
Abby was seated so that she was facing Garma's general direction, making it easy for her to pick him out. "Him?" she said when Thunderbringer was finished. "I know him. He's staying in one of my cabins. Called a couple of days ago, caught me with an opening, and booked five days. I was happy to fill the vacancy. He arrived yesterday, but he's not calling himself Dale Garma. He's registered as David Gale from Chicago."
Abby owns and operates the aforementioned No Name Bay General Store and Lodge, the "lodge" part consisting of six cabins, including mine. The others she rents out to fishermen, boaters, and general vacationers in the warm months, hunters and ice fishermen in the winter. This makes her, in addition to being my main squeeze, also my landlady. And, according to what she'd just told us, it now made "David Gale" my new neighbor for the next few days.
Thunderbringer had gone back to eating. "Well, well," he said. "This gets more intriguing by the minute."
"Yeah, intriguing," I muttered.
"Are you sure it's the same guy?" Abby asked Thunderbringer.
"Wouldn't've said anything if I wasn't."
Abby frowned. "So what should we do? Do you think he's here to, you know, do a hit on somebody? Do we need to contact the sheriff and let him know what's going on?"
"Trouble is," I told her, stabbing another cut of walleye off my plate, "we don't know what's going on. There's nothing illegal about Garma just being here."
"He's not wanted anywhere for anything specific," Thunderbringer said. "There's a big difference between people in certain circles knowing about somebody like Garma and the cops having sufficient proof to actually bring charges against him. So there's really nothing the sheriff could do, even i
f we did tell him. All we'd accomplish might be to alert Garma he'd been made."
Abby's frowned deepened. "So what does that leave?"
Thunderbringer and I exchanged glances. I gave it a beat and then said, without enthusiasm, "I guess it leaves us needing to keep a close eye on 'Mr. Gale' until we do figure out what he's up to."
* * *
Five o'clock Saturday morning found Thunderbringer and me standing at water's edge beside the No Name Bay boat ramp, motioning guidance to B.U. Gorcey as he backed his pickup and attached trailer down to where we could offload his eighteen-foot pontoon boat, the Let 'Er Buck, and put in for a few hours of fishing.
Everything was clear and still. Cool, as you would expect for the middle of September. The surface of Lake Mac lay as flat and motionless as a giant mirror reflecting the sky's canopy of fading stars. The first hint of dawn was just beginning to edge above the eastern horizon.
B.U. Gorcey and his wife, Mamie, are owners/operators of the Lassoed Walleye Saloon. Mamie is a former Las Vegas showgirl, a brassy, sassy, sexy, busty blonde bombshell like they don't hardly make anymore. B.U., twenty-five years her senior, is a grizzled veteran of the rodeo circuit, that hard life showing on his weathered, deeply seamed face, his stiff-backed posture above the bow-legged, rolling gait of his walk, and in the streaks of gray shot through the pony tail that dangles down the back of his neck from underneath a battered old cowboy hat that seldom leaves his head. It was, in fact, the point of much conjecture amongst a few No Name Bay semi-regulars as to whether or not the hat might actually be nailed in place. I knew better because I'd seen the man with it off on at least two occasions. But I kept mum—who was I to tamper with a legend in the making?
Once he had his truck backed far enough down into the water so that the rear of the Let 'Er Buck was afloat, B.U. set the brake and got out to help us shove the rest of the craft on off the trailer.
"Mornin', boys," he greeted.
Our outing had been arranged the previous day so this was the first we were seeing of B.U. this morning. We good-morninged him back and then the three of us set our shoulders to the prow of the boat and got all of her out onto the water.
BEAT to a PULP: Hardboiled Page 11