DOORWAYS by A.J. KIRBY

Let's all give Andy a warm welcome with this unmissable beaut of a début...

Doorways

The doorway smells phone-boxy. I see him wrinkle his nose and consider whether it is me who smells phone-boxy. On account of my charity shop coat I suppose. And the rather unbecoming beanie hat I’m wearing. I wrinkle my nose too, just to make sure he recognises I’m not, no matter how I’m dressed, comfortable in a place like this. That I’m making the best of it, just as he is.  Just as my son Robbie has been.

The rain is almost horizontal, angling into us, pushing us further back into the shop doorway to escape it. It’s windy too, it buffets against the station’s one, lonely sign, causing it to creak back and forth on its hinges. And if the wind is doing that to the rather permanent-looking sign, then I can only imagine what it will be doing to the ‘Welcome Home’ bunting which I’ve left above the front door. But that’s one thing to be thankful for, I reckon. The bunting was a terrible idea anyway. Doesn’t make sense; for one, here isn’t home, and for two, I’m not sure if Robbie will be especially welcome. Not yet.

The doorway man glances at me, offers a fleeting smile. Then his eyes flee to his watch. I try to peer over his shoulder, see exactly how late the train is this side. I can’t believe they’ve not got a big clock on the platform. They always have big clocks on platforms, I thought. But then, I thought platforms were supposed to have sheltered areas too. And there’s neither. Just the shop, in which I can see one of the sales assistants clearing up the day’s mess. Taking her time about it too, as though she’s waiting for the rain to slacken off a little.

He looks at his watch again. And once more I try to glance over his shoulder. He must feel my presence though, because he jerks his head round, and for a moment, there’s fire in his eyes, like I’ve distracted him from something. And then, quickly, he covers up the fire. Just like Robbie used to do.

‘Nice night to be out,’ he says. He doesn’t say it ironically or mournfully, just flat. And yet my heart leaps. How can he know? He must see my eyes widen in alarm, for he adds, ‘Only thing worse than the British weather is the British train system.’

Relax. Out can mean anything.

I nod out at the lashing rain. ‘My son used to ask me if rain like this was God crying.’ And for the life of me I don’t know why I said that, about Robbie. I don’t generally bring him up.

‘Oh yeah?’ says the man. ‘Suppose God could be too, day like this… ’ He shakes his head. A few drips of water fly off. ‘It’s siling though isn’t it?’

            And straight away I know this doorway man is from Hull. Siling’s a proper East Riding term. The thought he is from Hull doesn’t necessarily fill me with pleasure. I look at him with a little more interest now. And realise he was in the shop with me earlier as the assistant was trying to shepherd us out the door. Studying the evening edition of the paper, he was. It’s a long time since I’ve read a newspaper. It’s a long time since I’ve read anything apart from my romances. This doorway man though. Looks like he reads a lot. Maybe he’s a student. Few years younger than Robbie. Hard to tell. Certainly his eyes look… Well, in one of my romances, they’d have been described as dark pools into which one could plunge. They look full of knowledge. Most of the rest of him is covered. He has a cap pulled down low, the peak shadowing his forehead. A scarf rolled up over his chin. The scarf is steaming, it is that damp.

            It dawns on me we are waiting for the same train. ‘Where you headed?’

‘Nowhere in particular,’ he says, pulling a sodden Platform Ticket out of the back pocket of his jeans. ‘Waiting for someone.’

‘Snap,’ I say, pulling out my own. ‘I’m waiting for someone too.’ Have been a long time, I don’t add. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a conversation with anyone and I need to start re-learning boundaries again. What doorways I can and cannot cross. This is officially the longest chat since the estate agent showed me around the new place in the new town. Before that there was Denise at my old work, asking all those questions about Robbie being in the army and then, in the end starting that collection for him… Too much.

The doorway man awkwardly proffers a hand. ‘Clive,’ he says. ‘As in Sullivan. TheYorkshire cricketer.’

‘Kirst… Kirst-ie,’ I mumble, adding the last bit because Kirst sounds a little bit too close to the truth when I say it out loud. Not that I get to say it out loud much. Not that I haven’t been doing my own solitary. My husband never spoke at all after Robbie left. Clammed up. And then one day he left, and in his note, it said ‘I don’t know how you can live with it.’ Which meant with him. With the knowledge of what Robbie had done. And there was part of me which couldn’t comprehend how my son could have done such a thing. With those hands which used to fit round my little finger. With those hands which used to reach for me as though I was his whole world, or at least his doorway to the whole world. With those hands which later I’d try to drag away from the plug socket after a toaster fire. With those hands which then became skilled at finding the knives, even though I locked them away in one of the top cupboards. Oh but they were Robbie’s hands, that was the point. That was always the point. My husband, Robbie’s father, couldn’t grasp it. But men are like that. Men do not understand about ties that bind, about what it means for me to have incarcerated my son in the cell of my womb for a nine-month stretch. Son probably got Stockholm Syndrome for me, his warder. I got whatever the vice-versa of that is…

I know the next logical question will be, so who are you waiting for then? And I’m already rehearsing in my head those practiced lines. About Robbie having been away in the armed forces the past eight years. I’ve even done some research into Yorkshire regiments. Where they ‘do their time’. That sort of thing. Back in the old place, which in itself was a new place, I sometimes got a little carried away though. Inventing daring escapades for him and the like. Across the doorway, in my pretend world, there was talk of the Victoria Cross. Eventually, there was talk of an injury too, which would see him sent home at last. Hence the collection Denise got going. ‘Help for Heroes’. A thought which made me choke back my tea and leave the job as soon as I possibly could. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred pounds.

So the next question could have been a real taxer. But it isn’t. Instead, the doorway man, Clive – though he looks too young for a Clive really – says, ‘So do you live around here?’

And I heave a sigh of relief. ‘Temporarily.’

He nods, understands.

‘Are you a student then?’ I ask.

He sighs. Lowers his head a little as though the rain which is creating such a ruckus on top of the shop is actually beating down on his cap. ‘Was,’ he says. ‘I left. Other things became… more important.’

‘I know what you mean,’ I say.

He looks balefully at the ‘No Smoking’ sign on the wall, and then up at the CCTV camera up there on its eyrie hanging from one of the roof beams. ‘Weather like this, nobody’d even smell the smoke. I’m gasping. Must be the stress or something.’

I’m not sure what he’s driving at, but I tell him that if we kind of crook ourselves further into the doorway, standing back to back, then he can have his smoke and I’ll be blocking him from the camera.

‘Really?’ he says.

‘Sure, why not,’ I shrug.

And so now we’re stood back to back, him looking up the track, me looking back down it. Which feels strangely apt. It also feels weirdly like a confessional booth. We’re talking, but we can’t see, don’t hardly know the other person, and so we’re freer.

‘Where’s your son? I mean, what does he do?’ asks Clive, suddenly. ‘Apart from talk about God crying?’

In my moment’s pause, I hear the loud exhalation of his smoke. I open my mouth to trot out the rehearsed lines, but somehow, the door won’t open. He stabs men in bar-fights, like Hull’s the Wild West. He gets sent to prison. Man he stabbed has been in a coma ever since. Each in their own cells… Though Robbie’s finally being released. Tells me he’s changed, but he wouldn’t even let me come meet him at the gates.

‘He’s… he’s… I suppose you could say he’s at the doorway between things at the moment,’ I stutter.

‘Sounds like my older brother,’ says Clive. ‘He’s been… He was at a doorway like that for ten years. But we let him go yesterday. Let him pass through. And now I’m here. All I want to do is look in the face of the man who did it to him.’

I hear the train’s long off-key honk signaling its approach. Then I see its lights rainbowing through the downpour. Though it might be because my eyes are now misted with tears. And as the train starts to rattle into the station, I wonder if there is another doorway I can hide in now.

‘I’m sorry,’ I breathe. But the train is on the platform now and it is too loud for anyone to hear. 

BIO:

AJ Kirby is a sportswriter from Yorkshire. He was short-listed for the Ilkley Literature Festival Fiction Prize.

To find out more visit his website: www.andykirbythewriter.20m.com

PERFECT WORLD - an eBook by AJ Kirby, available now!

Novel: BULLY by AJ Kirby - a supernatural tale of revenge from beyond the grave. 


Website for new novel - Paint This Town Red.

COUNTDOWN by John Kenyon

John debuts in fine style...

Countdown

10...

We were so close that her heart and my heart were touching, as if fused together. She looked up at me, her eyes clouded with confusion.

“What do you mean?” she said.

“I have a confession,” I said. “I’m afraid it’s going to tear us apart, but I can’t keep on like this.”

“Oh, God. I should have known,” she said. “Too good to be true. What, you’re married?”

“No. Remember when you said it was the worst thing and the best thing to ever happen to you? Well, please keep both possibilities in mind.”

9...

It was the first time we had made love with the lights on. It wasn’t teen-aged apprehension or the shame of flabby thirty-somethings gone to seed. There were simply things she didn’t want me to see. I knew they were there. They didn’t affect me. At least not the way she thought. She was worried about the surface, how she looked. But I was in love, and appearances didn’t matter. She was beautiful, and the flaws did nothing to take away from that. She was baring herself to me. I felt like it was time to reciprocate.

8...

“I really don’t mind the scars.”

She stood looking at herself in a full-length mirror affixed to the back of the bedroom door. She turned this way and that, twisting to find the right angle to take in another part of her body. In bra and panties, the scars were clearly visible. They snaked up her forearms, made red splotches on her lower legs and angry welts along her neckline.

“You don’t mind them, do you?” she asked,

“No,” I said. “Now come to bed, and this time let’s leave the light on.”

7...

“I don’t know how I would have gotten through this without you,” she said.

She sat next to me on the couch in my apartment, her legs up under her, her head on my chest. I didn’t respond, simply ran my fingers through her hair. It had grown out into a bob that made her seem younger.

“I kind of feel like I’m falling for you,” she said.

“That’s not a surprise,” I said, taking her by the shoulders and pulling her upright. “I’ve been taking care of you.”

“No,” she said. “It’s something more.”

6...

Mr. Jennings paced back and forth across the back room. I caught a glimpse of collegiate flesh through the door to the front of the tanning salon.

“Is this going to be a problem for us?” he said.

“No, sir. It’s under control. It’s strictly professional.”

“It had better be,” he said, stopping directly in front of me. “There’s no room for guilt in this business, David.”

I nodded. “It was my mistake. I’m just trying to make it right.”

“Just don’t make it any worse.”

5...

“You’re doing what?”

Chris had just gotten back from picking up payments. We were sitting in the back of the salon.

“It’s only until she gets on her feet. I’m responsible, so I thought I’d help her out.”

“Well, she is hot. Saw her picture in the paper,” he said. “What did the fire do to her?”

“She has scars, but the doctor said they’ll fade with time.”

“Guess she won’t be coming in here any time soon,” Chris said with a laugh. “These piece-of-shit beds would finish the job.”

4...

“Did you get that from me?”

We were on my couch, watching TV. She had pulled aside the collar of my button-down to reveal a small, red scar in the shape of a heart.

“I guess. It’s just like yours,” I said, pointing to her neck. “Your necklace must have heated up in the fire and branded both of us when I carried you out.”

“I still don’t know how to thank you.”

“There’s no need,” I said. “Right place, right time. I was lucky.”

“No,” she said. “I’m the lucky one.”

3...

I wheeled her to the hospital door and then helped her up and led her to my car.

“You’re sure you want to do this? I’ll be getting in your way.”

“Nonsense. I have plenty of room.”

“OK,” she said. “I guess I should expect no less. You didn’t miss a day the whole time.”

“Figured you could use the company. Now I figure you can use the help.”

“My guardian angel,” she said, rising onto her tiptoes to give me a kiss on the cheek.

“Something like that.”

2...

I rushed in, pulling my jacket over my head to repel the flames already licking along the walls. The screams were coming from a bedroom in the back. I kicked in the door and found her trying to open a window that had been painted shut. I grabbed a blanket and picked her up in my arms. Holding her tight against me, I rushed back through the blaze and toward the sanctuary of the front yard.

1...

I packed the explosives next to the natural gas line that fed the furnace. It needed to burn so hot that no one could determine a cause. Mr. Jennings’ had made that clear. I wasn’t sure if it was an insurance thing or something more. He assured me the house would be vacant.

I stepped out to my car parked halfway down the block, and whispered a countdown under my breath. I fingered the trigger, heard a muted blast, and then everything was aflame.

Then I heard the scream.


BIO:
John Kenyon is a newspaper editor in Iowa and keeps the blog Things I'd Rather Be Doing (tirbd.com). He has published stories with Thuglit, Crime Factory, Beat to a Pulp and many other fine purveyors of crime fiction.

FRANKLIN'S PASS by Patrick Whittaker

Make Patrick feel welcome on his debut with the mystery of...

Franklin's Pass

‘So you didn’t see an armoured van?’ asked a perplexed Inspector Venn.

The foreman sighed impatiently. ‘As I’ve repeatedly told everyone who’s questioned me: no. There’s been precious little traffic and I would have noticed.’

Venn looked along the narrow road. Cutting through a wooded valley, it was flanked by drainage ditches that should have made it impossible for the van to have left the highway here. And yet, according to his information, it must have done.

His men combed the woods but his gut told him they were wasting their time.

‘Excuse me,’ said the foreman. ‘But we’ve potholes to fill.’

The foreman’s team – seasoned navvies one and all - stood beside their tar truck, shovels in hand. Their displeasure at being kept from working was all too plain.

‘Sorry to have held you up,’ said Venn. ‘Please carry on.’

***

Back at the police station, Venn locked himself in his office and reviewed the facts. At 7:06, the van had left London carrying gold worth £7 million. It’s tracking device relayed its position as it headed north - until it reached Franklin’s Pass where contact was lost.

Venn put his feet on the desk and checked his note book. At first nobody had been alarmed. Franklin’s Pass was a known radio black spot. They took it for granted they’d pick up the van again in a couple of minutes. But they didn’t.

He watched CCTV footage. Thanks to an out of town supermarket, he had proof that at 9:37 the van was on its prescribed route and approximately 10 minutes from the pass.

On the other side of Franklin’s Pass, a petrol station kept an electronic eye on the road and captured traffic going both ways. Venn watched that morning’s tape. At 9:50 – about when he would have expected the van to appear – a sports car hurried past. A minute later, a family saloon towing a caravan headed in the opposite direction. And then a minibus rolled by. If the van had reached the pass, the occupants of the minibus must have seen it. He made a note to have the vehicle traced.

After the minibus came a tractor, a bulldozer and a camper van.

And that was it.

Venn picked up his phone. ‘Sergeant Norris, I want the personnel records of everyone in the van and everyone monitoring its progress. If this isn’t an inside job, I’m a monkey’s uncle.’

The workmen filled the last pothole in Franklin’s Pass. Taking pride in their work, they paused to tell each other how smooth the road looked and how well the new tar blended with the old.

‘Well done, lads,’ said the foreman. ‘That’s a job well done.’

As the tar truck lumbered on to the next site, the workmen climbed aboard their minibus. The foreman sat next to the driver. ‘Off you go, Harry, and drive carefully. We’ve had quite enough bother from the police for one day.’

Inspector Venn gave up on sleep. Although his flat was the cosiest of bachelor pads, on nights such as this it seemed too large.

I’m like a bonbon rattling around inside an otherwise empty tin, he mused as he cleared the kitchen table.

From the freezer, he took out packets of convenience food – burgers, faggots, lasagne – and stood them on the table in parallel lines. These represented the steep hills of Franklin’s Pass with their impenetrable trees. A tin of corned beef made do as the armoured van.

Now what else was there? Oh yes. The supermarket. Venn placed his tea caddy at one end of the table. At the other, a carton of milk did duty as the petrol station.
Which left just the road gang (six batteries) with their tar truck (a jar of Marmite) and minibus (half a bar of cooking chocolate).

‘Right,’ he muttered, steering the corned beef past the caddy. ‘This is where you were last sighted. But your tracker says you made it to Franklin’s Pass without mishap.’

Or had they? Supposing the van had been hijacked before the pass and its tracker disabled? Then all the thieves had to do was turn on an identical tracker and drive it along the van’s route.

But if that had happened, why did the thieves effectively raise the alarm by turning off the tracker at Franklin’s Pass?

Simple. To direct attention away from the van’s actual location. In which case, the decoy vehicle would be on the petrol station’s CCTV tape. With computer enhancement, it should be possible to make out its registration.

Of course, the van might actually have made it to the pass. If so, why hadn’t the workmen seen it?

Maybe they had. Maybe they’d hijacked it, forced the guards out, blasted open the doors and hid both the loot and the van. All in the space of 20 minutes.

‘Now you’re clutching at straws, you fool.’

Someone else who couldn’t sleep was the foreman. Despite the risks, he felt compelled to revisit the crime scene.

Parking at the mouth of the pass with his headlights on full beam, he experienced a warm glow as he surveyed the road’s flawless surface and recalled the moment the armoured van had rolled over the tar-covered canvas. He’d caught a brief glimpse of the driver’s shocked face as the ground swallowed him up.

With the van occupying most of it, the hole was quickly filled in. Then the boys had gone to work, resurfacing the road, tamping down the tar and covering it with just enough dirt to make it look old. They’d finished minutes before the police arrived.

Now all they had to do was wait until the heat was off. Then they could safely return to Franklin’s Pass with an excavator and some cutting equipment.

As for the guards in the van: he’d see they got a decent burial. It was the least he could do.


BIO:
Patrick Whittaker is an author, screenwriter & playwright. Find out more here...
www.coldfusion.freewebtools.com

WOLF MOON OVER YOUNGSTOWN by Terry White

Wolf Moon over Youngstown


My workload jumped a notch when our resident film critic decided to pursue a degree in culinary arts at YSU. The publisher is an ancient, tightfisted soul who believes staff should be willing to “roll up their sleeves,” which is Frank Felice’s euphemism for “work for free.”

He stopped by my desk to congratulate me as the Trib’s new film critic starting this weekend with the Dreck at the mall cineplex. The films were about teenaged angst, teenaged mischief, or were the standard teenaged stabathons of the Jason Vorhees variety.

“Do I get Monesmith’s salary with it?”
That was rhetorical. I’d be lucky to get the cost of the tickets reimbursed.
“How’s that anniversary story coming?”
“I’m seeing her this afternoon,” I said. Besides crime beat, I do human-interest stuff.

If it weren’t for Kelly “The Ghost” Pavlik giving rust-belt Youngstown something to cheer about at the Chevrolet Center, we’d be out in the streets restoring our lost reputation as the Murder Capital of America. Frank actually liked the old days when a “Youngstown tune-up” meant a few bucks in the morning by starting a gangster’s car for him in his driveway. The Mahoning Valley Tribune wasn’t exactly in the vanguard of a crimebusting, and he made a fortune with corrupt city officials to keep it that way.

My own standards have slipped lower than a gangbanger’s pants. When I lost my real newspaper job, I started over by patching up my marriage with Libby and quitting the late-night boozing. The hack work was one thing I stopped fighting. I can do Virgin Mary sightings without a whiff of sarcasm. But going along and getting by are never good enough if you ever had big dreams of making it in your profession.

The nursing home where they installed Mary Huberty was just outside Boardman. It’s a snobby township cultivating a rustic, faux Tudor appeal to Youngstowners with dough. The urban sprawl makes it seem lost amid the strip malls and fashion emporia. The recession has hit here too, though. You see lots of For Sale signs in the windows and the upscale deli has been converted to a working-class diner where the robust smell of steamed onions reached me all the way to the parking lot.

The first thing that surprised me was her age. Frank had me thinking she was an old woman but she was only 45. She sat hunched over in a wheelchair by the window. She was bone-thin. Her hair was a dusty battleship gray. A sliver of drool glistened from the corner of her mouth. The supervisor stepped in front of me to wipe Mary’s chin with a Kleenex.

“There’s someone from the paper to see you, Mary!”
Mary’s head bobbed on its thin stem of neck. She gurgled.
“Mary! Someone came to visit you, sweetheart!”

The supervisor turned her wheelchair around. I reminded myself of my pledge not to wind up in a place like this. I once investigated these kinds of facilities and discovered there’s a 70 percent chance you will if you do not have three daughters. Mary was childless. I tell Libby I’ll do her with a Louisville slugger and use a gun on myself. Libby doesn’t take me seriously.

Mary moved her head a tiny bit. It was like watching a sloth come out of a coma.
I introduced myself in short sentence. Frank’s description also omitted the fact that she was this mentally incapacitated.

“Look,” the supervisor said. She swept a lock of Mary’s hair back. The small white scar that dipped below her hairline near the temple zigzagged across her scalp; it was like a map where a spiderweb of trickles becomes a wide river at the estuary.
I stuck my notebook inside my pocket, thanked her and left.
Felice, you moron...

Outside the mingling aromas from the diner whetted my appetite. Nothing like the scent of human decay to arouse the old limbic brain: Eat, fight, flee, do the Wango Tango—messages from that glob at the top of the spine into the neocortex for processing into politer social interactions.

I reached Van Robinson’s voicemail and offered to buy him supper at MacGoine’s.
“Supper” is a euphemism for the mixed beverages served at Van’s favorite bar. Lieutenant Robinson was my best source, and he was the only cop who did not dump me when I lost my job at the big paper across town. Van was a detective sergeant back then.

He laughed when I told him what happened.
“What the hell did you think? The shooter sprayed the windshield with an assault rifle. We picked up spent shells for an hour.”
“No motive?”
“No nothing,” Van said. The memory coming back caused him to grunt. “Zilch-point shit on everything. Near as we can say, the shooter must have had an encounter—”
“Encounter?”
“Road rage, something—we don’t know. She couldn’t say. The doctors who did the surgery said her brain was so swollen they had to split the skull to ease the pressure. She was three months in a coma.”

It’s hard to imagine even during Youngstown’s bloodiest days: two cars on a freeway at night going south toward Canfield on Route 11. It’s late, there’s little traffic. A southbound exit is a thousand feet from the shoulder. Sodium arc lights on the overpass, reflector poles leading to the exit. Visibility that night was good. A full moon, Van said. A February moon is the wolf moon.

The husband and wife have just come from Lowe’s where they bought two hundred dollars’ worth of shelving and brackets shaped like plaited rope for their kitchen. They pass the Beeghley Center at the college and turn right down Market. One car bumps another from behind. The car stops to check damage. The driver of car two opens up on the Hubertys. The highway is littered with .9 mm rounds, 115-grain capacity slugs, from an assault rifle. Gerald is shredded. Mary recovers but her brain is pulpified and she is sent to the county home as a ward of the state. In two days it will be the seventh anniversary of the shooting. For seven years she has sat in a wheelchair during daylight hours and stared out a window.

“So it’s still an open case?”
“We’re actively pursuing all leads,” Van said and burped. The case would stay open until the heavens fell. I ordered him another Horse’s Neck.
“Prosit,” Van said.
I clinked with my club soda. “Anybody you liked for it?”
“About two dozen possibles,” he said. Sensational crimes bring out the loonie-tunes. “Nobody we didn’t clear,” he said finally. “We went deep on the family, believe me. Me and my partner were approved to fly out to Nevada to interview a cousin. The city was all over our ass on this. The watch commander made it a red ball and gave us extra guys. Nothing. Well liked, kindly, decent people. Salt of the earth—if that means anything.”
“You link it to anything?”

I remembered other unsolved crimes. Cocaine had made its presence felt in bars and nightclubs. Crack was eating the ghetto; then the scourge was all over the city: black tar heroin from Mexico, Ex for the raves from Amsterdam, and worst of all, the first wave of Nazi meth labs from central California.

Cops were so busy they almost had to overlook rednecks selling weed to the high schools. Thousands of men out of work, steel mills closing all over the Valley, no jobs that didn’t come with a blue smock and a Smiley face, or require you to point at pictures of hamburgers—it was a recipe for catastrophe. That was the time I had to pick to stop drinking.

Van thought about that for a moment. “We had some freeway shootings, some overpass rock throwers. Gangbangers, drivebys. Nutjobs. Nothing like this. It’s a mystery.” He savored the word as if it held a mystical note.
I reminded him about the prostitute murders.
“No connection,” he said. “Choke-and-dump jobs. Don’t get me started on that shit.”
“Could be a serial.”
“Screw you, serial.”

LaCresha Pettway’s body was discovered in rural Geauga County up north. Squirrel hunters found her remains a hundred yards from the body of Rhonda Byrd. Both were long gone to rotten and the decomp too advanced to reveal much. The same series of nicks were found on the spinal vertebrae of both.

The trouble was dead prostitutes started showing up in the wake of the crack epidemic all over Ohio. All crack whores, their clothes hiked up around their waists, some with faces pulverized, and several manually strangled. Pettway was the mother of four small children, the byblows of her wayward calling. The papers called them “Strawberry Girls,” borrowing Youngstown PD homicide slang.
Van downed the rest of his drink. “You sound like those TV-watching peanut heads who see serial killers under their beds.” Something in me still liked to watch a man enjoy that amber fluid, ambrosia of the gods.
Then Van dropped his bomb: “We liked your brother-in-law for a time for the Pettway thing.”
“My—what did you say?”

Three Horse Necks later I had all the details I was going to get off the record.
My brother-in-law Morty was a mope, a loser, and we cordially despised each other at the occasional family get-together. He worked as a machinist at the Sheet and Tube out of high school before it went under. He took odd jobs like fry cook or pizza delivery man. When I saw him, he was always looking for work or on the verge of some “breakthrough” that would make him a ton of money. He was also an equal-opportunity hater. He was fired from his last job because he refused to deliver to a house where he thought gays lived. He thought welfare mothers should have their wombs cauterized with acid.

Morty has these bulging eyes that remind me of a mackerel. His hair is always combed sleek at the crown, but it pops up in tufts. He asked the bartender for a beer chaser.

“So—the wife,” Morty said. “What did she say?”
“She didn’t say anything,” I said. “The poor thing’s brain is mush.”
“That’s a shame,” Morty said. He took a big swallow of whiskey and then downed half the beer.
“The cops still don’t know what happened,” I said. “Maybe a robbery gone bad.”
“Are you nuts? What kind of asshole does that? Not even a nig—not even a—you know, one of them—” He did a quick tattoo on his wrist with an index finger in case I missed his point—“not even one of them would do something that stupid.”
“Got to be a motive the police missed,” I said. “Somebody doesn’t just kill two innocent people in the middle of a highway for no reason at all.”
That night I called Van.
“Give me something to bait the hook with,” I pleaded.
“I could lose my job for talking to you about this,” he said.
“I’ve got to know whether he’s a sociopath or just the world’s biggest asshole for a brother-in-law,” I said.
“Ask him—ask him about the bumper sticker,” Van said.
“What bumper sticker?”
“The Hubertys had a sticker on the back window. It said ‘A Woman’s Right to Choose.’ You didn’t hear this from me.”

Something clicked. Morty’s pendulum swings between a point somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun all the way to the delicate sensibilities of the princess who complained about a pea under her mattress. I remembered an argument between him and Libby once. It was about why we had no children. My sperm count is abnormally low but Libby isn’t one to shout our marital woes from the rooftops. Morty accused us of being “selfish,” spoiled by our love of material possessions. I didn’t think much of it at the time—just another crackpot theory of my wife’s goofy brother.

At two in the morning the phone rang and kept ringing. The answering machine picked up but the caller left no message. Finally Libby got up and checked caller ID.
She punched some numbers. She said one word: “Morty.”
She turned to me. “He wants you to go over there.”
I got out of bed. “If I don’t call you back in one hour, call Van Robinson,” I said.
The trailer was a double-wide situated at the end of a cul-de-sac. The front door was wide open.

I walked in and confronted a mess. I had been inside it once when I helped him move in. The clutter he had accumulated since was beyond anything I had ever seen. Every conceivable space had something wedged into it. Chairs or tables were submerged under piles of junk. The next thing I was aware of was an olfactory assault that went straight through my brain—a rancid, disgusting reek that felt like a wall had caved in on me. The interior was dark except for the magma glow of a computer screen. I had to twist and turn my body through the debris to get to it. It was like being in a nightmare where you’re stuck in quicksand and something’s chasing you. Twice my foot went through something slushy before I extracted it. The screensaver was a fetus with its disassembled parts on a stainless steel table after a partial-birth abortion.

I waded down the corridor to the back bedroom. I called his name but no one responded. Before I was halfway there, I had to lean over to vomit. I couldn’t bend over very far so some of what I spewed up spattered against my leg, which was thigh-deep in some slurry of garbage.

I inched my way to the doorway. A small halo of light illuminated a nude form. I could barely discern Morty through the stacks of paper that stretched to the ceiling. He lay on his side in a fetal position, whimpering and sticking his fingers in his mouth. Biting his hand until it bled. The mattress was black and wet-looking and seemed to be squirming. It seethed with maggots.

“Morty,” I said.
“She—she told me those weren’t real babies,” he cried.
His great, bulging eyes looked black. “She said they were just tissue! Like Kleenex—like used Kleenex! Those were babies!” He made a moaning sound that rose up the scale like a wolf baying at the moon.
“Rhonda Byrd, LaCresha Pettway—” I began.
“Scum, whores, sluts! N-no business bringing in-nocent children into the world!”

His big body rocked on the mattress in spastic jerks like a man being electrocuted. He tried to tuck his legs closer to his belly. His skin appeared ghostly green. He kept twitching in that rocking motion like a giant baby cocooned in a green womb of bliss.

Blips of turquoise and cherry flashed between the slats of blinds against the far wall. I heard the shrill notes of caterwauling sirens in Doppler time. Two cruisers turned onto the winding entrance road of the trailer park. The sound grew louder until they ripped a hole in the night, but nothing could penetrate the walls of muck where I stood looking down in silence at Morty’s shimmering mass.

I dreaded going home to my wife.


BIO:
Terry White lives in Northeast Ohio and has been publishing noir and hardboiled fiction for the last several years. Among his recent publications are stories in Yellow Mama, A Twist of Noir, Sex and Murder and “The Dog Returneth to His Vomit,” archived in TKnC. “The Frotteur in the Dark” was named one of the 6 Best Of stories for 2009 by 10,000 Tons of Black Ink.

THE MAN IN ME by Michael O'Brien

Michael debuts in fine style...

The Man in Me

Home again, but only in the literal sense, for Jared received no joy returning here. He strode up the handful of steps to the front door. Through the bay window he saw a teenage girl watching television. The sitter’s here. Alicea must be out again. Why they needed a house sitter in the first place never made sense to him. But Alicea never listened to him anymore. If she wanted one, she would have one. Jared turned back down the stairs and walked to the back of the house. He hated interacting with the sitter more than he did his wife.

Besides a few scattered blades of grass reflecting the moon, the backyard, bound by a chain link fence, was completely dark. The small, concrete patio had a cheap, plastic table with four chairs. In the corner was a name brand grill with a cover on it to protect it from the elements. Jared couldn’t recall ever using it.

He slipped through the back door, then carefully stepped through the kitchen, and made the turn down the hall behind the sitter. She was either asleep or too enthralled in the stupid program she was watching to notice. Not much of a house sitter.

The hall was long and putrid. God only knew the last time it had been cleaned. The air hung heavy. The light was off, making it look like mold decayed the walls before his eyes. They were a peculiar beige color, with cobwebs in the corners. Home.

Jared entered through the master bedroom door which had been left open, and gently closed it behind him. The bathroom door was open a crack, and the light shined through, revealing the crib in the small space between the bed and the closet. The crib: a daily reminder of their broken dreams. They bought it before the miscarriage. Now, it sat empty in their bedroom. Jared turned the bathroom light off and his nightmare disappeared into the darkness. With a clear conscience, he lay on the far edge of the bed.

An hour or so later he heard a noise. It was his wife returning from her nightly adventures. He had been sleeping peacefully for the first time in as long as he could remember. Jared heard giggles, then a man’s deep voice. Jared’s heart thumped against his ribs. Here? She brought him here? Then Jared heard the sitter’s voice. The door opened and shut. Maybe the stranger left with the sitter. No way would she bring him here. At least she had always offered Jared that decency. Then the man’s voice echoed again. The stranger was here. Jared curled in the fetal position on the far side of the bed away from the door.

Then Jared heard their footsteps approaching down the hall. He knew where they were headed. He shut his eyes, not wanting them to know he was awake, and saw the light from the hall burst into the room as she opened the door. The light shone onto the crib across the room from the bed. Jared squeezed his eyes shut. Tighter, tighter, desperately trying to make this nightmare disappear the same way he made the crib disappear: by turning out the lights. He didn’t move and barely breathed.

“Is the baby sleeping?” the asshole joked.

“Go to the kitchen and make yourself a drink. I’ll be right there. I’m gonna get into something a bit more comfortable,” spoke Alicea in her angelic voice.

Even now, he still loved her voice. He still loved her smile. But it wasn’t the same as it used to be. She used to be his and only his. Now she was like the unattainable girl in school. Someone he saw everyday and fantasized about, but could never have.

“Just go.” She gave the man a kiss and sent him on his way.

Jared heard his steps retreating to the kitchen as she eased her way into the master bathroom and turned the light on. Now, the crib was illuminated from both sides, as Jared remained in the dark. A few silent tears escaped down his cheek.

“I hope I didn’t wake you, honey. I’ll be done in a second,” she said sweetly.

He opened his eyes and looked at her, his wife. She stood in the doorway looking down at the crib. “You brought him here,” Jared whispered.

She ignored him. Then he heard a whimper and some rustling. He didn’t think he had whimpered, but he must have. The sound could come from nowhere else.

“I’m sorry it’s so late, sweetie,” she said in an innocent manner.

He was about to confront her, but lost the opportunity when she shut the bathroom door. The smell of alcohol and cigarettes lingered. And some strange cologne stained her clothes. Something different, something new. Over the past year Jared had become obsessed with colognes. Sometimes, after work, he would go to the mall and smell colognes until he found the one he remembered from her clothes the night before.

A minute later she came out wearing her bathrobe. It was pink and said, “Hers” in bold, white letters. They had gotten the pair for their fifth wedding anniversary from his parents. Jared’s was blue and said “His.” It hung in the bathroom collecting dust.

“Good night, sweetie,” she said as she made her way to the bedroom door.

“I hate you,” he whispered.

“I love you,” she said.

As soon as she shut the door the tears flowed. He wouldn’t cry in front of her. He wouldn’t give her that satisfaction. He really did hate her. But he loved her too. Sometimes, when she did something that made him hate her, he remembered that he loved her. He remembered when they met. When they were young. When they were in love. A year after he had finished graduate school and the summer before she graduated college. It was pouring rain that day; sheets of rain came down between the towers of New York City.

Jared loved to walk the streets in the rain in those days. He would wait all morning for his lunch break so that he could walk and watch all the miserable faces hiding behind umbrellas race by him. The rain and the streets and their misery kept him company.

The day he met Alicea, his lunch break began as all the other rainy ones. Jared strolled down the street whistling Paint it Black by the Rolling Stones, laughing at those who hustled by him. He loved the despair of others. As Jared turned a corner he looked down to avoid a puddle. When he looked up, she was right in front of him wearing a miniskirt and a black rain coat, looking down. He couldn’t stop. They collided and he almost knocked her over.

Jared was mesmerized. Her face was perfect, and she knew it, for she used little makeup. She had on a thin coat of red lipstick, a beautiful, white smile, and a perfectly curved 5’5” frame. She was the only one smiling amidst the rain drops. He asked her to dinner and she said yes.

He took her to a little Italian place on the Upper East Side. Short on space, long on personality, with great, unpretentious food. They told each other their stories. She had a year left at Pace University and was interning for the summer. He had finished graduate school the year before and worked at an accounting firm. She was from upstate New York. He was from upstate Pennsylvania. After dinner they walked through the still rainy streets, huddled close under his umbrella. He knew he had found his wife.

As Jared lay, knees curled up to his chest, he smiled through the tears. Those had been some of the best times of his life. They spent the summer frolicking in Central Park, and racing to one another’s apartments during lunch breaks to make love. He thought he was living a dream. And now, looking back, maybe it all had been a dream. How could he not have seen what was coming? The devil’s rage gripped his soul.

They married on a picturesque day in the fall, sixteen months after they met, completing Jared’s fairy tale. He had nabbed the girl of his dreams and he thought it was time for them to grow up and prepare for their family. He concentrated on his career more and more.

This is not what Alicea envisioned. She was in no hurry to find a career. She wanted to continue making love in the afternoons. He rarely obliged, but when he did, it didn’t satisfy her as much as before.

Jared convulsed, his body forcing the tears from his eyes. He needed sleep, but he knew he wouldn’t get any more tonight. Smelling cologne on her clothes was one thing. Somehow, he had gotten over that. But now he could hear him. The man was in their house. At that very instant he could hear them giggling in the den. In their den. The tears streaming down Jared’s face became hot. His face flushed. His feet curled as though with cramps.

As Jared tried to ignore the memories he couldn’t avoid, he heard another noise. They had moved past giggling and flirting. Now the floor creaked rhythmically.

She screamed the words that made him remember what happened to his perfect girl. “Fuck me! Fuck me! Harder!” She had screamed the same words at him about a year and a half ago. Not amidst the throngs of passion as she was doing now, but out of disgust. “Fuck me!” she had barked. “Get hard!” But orders like that didn’t arouse a passive man like Jared. It turned him off. She told him all the time that he wasn’t pleasing her. “When are you gonna fuck my brains out?” She would ask. “When are you gonna be a man?”

Alicea aroused him, of course. She was still only in her late twenties, and her three workout sessions a week had actually improved her figure over the years. He loved the way her ass looked and her breasts bounced when she walked. Jared masturbated to images of her to help his own needs, but dared not try and arouse her. He feared any intercourse with her for fear of not pleasuring her. Every night he prayed that she wouldn’t want to have sex. If his prayers failed him, more often than not he would remain flaccid, and she would bark orders at his penis to no avail. It was only a matter of time before she went outside their home to get her satisfaction. This was the first time she ever brought a man here though. Home.

Those memories stopped his tears. He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling. His tears boiled and steamed off his cheeks. He still heard them. Self-pity had long passed. The pulsing rage seized control. Jared enjoyed the sensation.

He jumped out of their bed and went to the bedroom door and opened it a crack. As though she knew, she screamed louder. He knew Alicea was putting on a show for him. “This could be you,” she was telling him with every passionate moan, “but you screwed it up.”

At that moment, he felt the testosterone he would need to please her, and he knew he’d be able to give her the best fuck of her life. But he wasn’t going to. He repressed a sudden urge to go back to bed and jerk-off. He had something else in mind.

He crept down the hall to the end, where it opened between the dining room and the den. His pestering thought motivated him to peer around the corner and watch. He watched this grizzled man with tattoos and muscles on his arms fuck his wife. She was bent over in front of him, leaning her head and hands on the arm of the couch, and he had his back to Jared.

The room shimmered. The lights flickered in his mind, and his focus zoomed in on his wife. The most beautiful woman he had ever bumped into. She was his once, but she didn’t think he was man enough for her.

He left his post and retreated down the hall to their bedroom without making a sound. Not that he needed to, for any creaks he made would surely be drowned out by his wife’s screams. Jared went to the closet and not back to bed as he should have. He searched through the corners and the clothes to find something personal. Something that would let him feel it. Then he found it.

In a silent flash he was back down the hall, peering around the corning at the man still fucking his wife. She was on her back now, with her legs in the air, and her head arched back. Jared crept up behind the man, who was still standing, praying that his loud heartbeats wouldn’t give his presence away. When he was the perfect distance, he clenched the bat, brought it back the way he did as a kid, closed his eyes, and swung with every ounce of strength he possessed.

The asshole’s skull exploded with a loud THUD! Jared felt the vibrations of the impact through the bat, and the splatters of blood across his face. When he opened his eyes he saw the pools of blood forming on the couch, on the floor, on his wife. Alicea screamed, but Jared couldn’t hear her. He gripped the bat tighter and looked down at her, his mind still blank, the room still trembling.

“Who are you?” Alicea screamed as Jared’s hearing returned. “Why? Why?”

“Why?” Jared barked. “Why? Because you brought him here! How could you do that?”

“What!?”

Jared raised the bat above his head as his eyes crossed. His mouth curled. There were splatters of blood everywhere. She screamed again as he swung the bat down. The bat cracked against her face. He swung again and again, lost in his fit of rage.

***

It took the police a little more than a half hour to respond. A neighbor had called 911 and reported hearing screams. When the two officers received no answer at the door, they broke it open to find the massacre. In the dining room, Jared had hung himself from the decorative wooden beams that lined the ceiling.

Other than the blood staining the white furniture and the expensive rugs, the house was very clean. The walls were painted white and lined with artwork and pictures of relatives.

“Oh shit… I know this guy,” the first cop said as he looked at the body dangling above the dining room table.

“From where?”

“He does my taxes.”

“You trusted this asshole with your money?” the second cop asked as he walked over to an end table and picked up a photo album.

“He did a great job. That’s all he lived for. Work. He seemed like a real lonely guy. No wife, no nothing. Just work,” the first cop replied. “He was real quiet. Couldn’t even make small talk. He just talked business. I told him I’d buy a couple rounds once and he turned me down. Said he didn’t drink. I felt bad for him.”

“I don’t feel bad for this piece of shit,” the second cop said as he leafed through the album. He motioned to the couple covered in blood on the couch. “These two look like they’ve been together a long time.”

“I wonder what made him do this. He doesn’t even live around here. He’s got a fancy apartment in the Upper East Side.”

“Jealous lover probably.”

“I don’t think so. No way that schmuck could’ve scored a babe like that, even if only for a night.”

“Whatever. Better call Homicide and let them figure it out. Go check the rest of the house.”

Suddenly, a baby cried from the master bedroom.


BIO:
Michael O’Brien currently lives in Hightstown, New Jersey where he bartends full time (aka babysits) and attends Wilkes University in pursuit of his MFA. He also volunteers as a tutor to illiterate adults and to English as a Second Language students.

THE SECRET SLEUTH by Ron Koppelberger

A deadly, double dose with a difference, as Ron debuts...

The Secret Sleuth

Winnow Folly stood in the midst of a tall commotion; a short middle aged adventurist, hair drawn in a taunt bun and pleated cotton skirt flowing in waves around her chubby ankles, she was a maiden at the wheel of a great mystery. The body was a broken bleeding pile of visceral riot. She surprised the tall rank, the police and the evil minded heir to the Pap fortune by leaning down to the mangled remains of Leo Pap and dipping her finger into the rapidly congealing blood.

“ Whater ya doing mam?” the blue vestured policeman asked.

“ The substance around Mr. Pap is, in appearance, blood Sergeant……” she read his embossed name tag, “Sergeant Reel, nevertheless it comes away clear, sticky and smelling of pine sap.”

Sergeant Reel looked at Winnows upraised finger. “Yer right Mrs. Folly,” he exclaimed in surprise.

Winnow smiled and pointed to the open book on the bedside table. “He had a penchant for the mysterious Sergeant, a dark and unabiding penchant," she explained calmly. She hefted the leather bound volume and said, “The spell on the open page, Sergeant."

In brute insistence the wolfish grimace of Idle Pap crowded Winnows world for a moment. Idle was Leo’s nephew and the sole heir to the Pap fortune. “What of my Uncles penchant, what of it?” he questioned.

She considered Idle for a moment before speaking. “Pine sap sir, it’s an ancient formula used in conjuring demons and ghosts, your uncle was covered in it.”

The shine of reflections and wild quests for freedom , the desire for power, even the power of a demon was the likely culprit, the decree of death as it were. Winnow glanced at the Sergeant and with a quiet whisper she ended his speculation. The Sergeant looked at Idles suit coat and gasped.

Aware of their sudden interest in his attire he became agitated. “What is it!…What is it? “ Idle growled.

The Sergeant gently guided Idles hands into the stainless steel cuffs and lead him away. The back of his suit jacket was covered in sap and scarlet gore. A design, a pattern in crimson. Clear simple and proposed by the vesture of hell she thought. The lettering on the back of Idles suit jacket was drawn in blood. It read,“ABBADON WAS HERE!”


The Mystery of the Gilded Mirror

Oral Practice surveyed the room with delicate secret and stealthy abandon. The curtains were a deep scarlet; velvet sashes, he thought. The walls were decorated with several reproductions, Monet and Picasso, “A terrible combination,” he whispered to himself. Touching the nightstand his finger came away dusty and dry.

“Has anyone moved the deceased?” he asked the hotel manager and the night clerk.

The manager spread his arms outward in exasperation. “This mess,” he pointed to the torn bleeding bodies, “is as I found it Mr. Practice.”

Practice, in steadfast summery, examined the bloody remains of Cordial Germ. The carpeting was a surge of amended beige and scarlet. The gouts of blood had splashed the entire room with what was now a congealed, sticky gloss. Cordial lay scattered about the room in an array of puzzle pieces, arms, legs and head; his head was in the flower basket and his arms were sticking upward like great bloody stems from the waste paper basket near the silken flowers.

A moment of silence passed between the three and in that space a gentle thunder rolled far away, distant, desolate yet exclaiming the grace of those who were in the arranged veils of life. Silent, the blood had streamed and spattered the wallpaper with tiny copper arrays of essence, essence of Cordial brought to you by unknown demons and affairs of fear. The silence weighed like a chunk of lead in the stomachs of the three.

Practice cleared his throat and scratched his scalp. “What whimsy in tumult and two pennies for the eyes, what fury in wayward bond with the devil, what deed doth draw us into the will of fear and angry rebuke?” Practice paused for an instant and tapped the manager on the breast. “Tis a storm, in arrays of price paid by those who live by shadow and silhouette.” He pointed to the gilded mirror hanging askew on the wall. “Tis here, the answer, the secret, we need only capture in the reflection of a gilded mirror.”


BIO:

Ron Koppelberger is aspiring to become established as a poet and a short story writer. He has written 93 books of poetry over the past several years and 16 novels. He has published 266 poems and 101 short stories in a variety of periodicals, including, The Storyteller, Ceremony, Write On!!! (Poetry Magazette), Freshly Baked Fiction and Necrology Shorts. His poem, 'Secret Sash' recently won the People’s Choice Award for poetry In The Storyteller, and he is a member of both The American Poet’s Society and The Isles Poetry Association.

A DATE by Pixie J. King

Pixie's back...

A Date

He was sitting outside Tony’s tea and coffee shop watching the people and the traffic hurry by as he sipped on his coffee. It was cold. He pushed it away in disgust and glanced at his watch.

She was late.

He sighed, figured she wouldn’t come. After all, internet dating sites rarely worked, not in his experience anyway. He took off his black round spectacles and took out his hankie and cleaned the glass. He slipped them back on his chubby face and saw her sitting opposite him.

She arrived out of thin air, it seemed, bringing a cold presence with her.

He smiled. ‘I didn’t think you were coming Sheila.’

‘Sorry Charlie, the bus was late,’ she whispered. ‘I hope I didn’t worry you at all.’

He shook his head. ‘Not at all.’ He placed his hands on hers. Her hands were cold. ‘Can I get you anything?’

She withdrew her hands, looked away. ‘No Charlie, I’m fine. Thank you.’

He nodded, couldn’t help but stare at her; he was mesmerised by her snow white skin, her plump red lips and her long flaxen hair. She looked like an angel dropped from heaven. ‘I lov--’

She put her finger to his lips; her eyes were watery. ‘Charlie, stop.’ She sighed. ‘I can’t be with you. It will never work. That’s what I came here to tell you. I couldn’t tell you over the internet. I’m sorry for misleading you.’

He stared at her, nodded slowly. He felt his throat tighten, his heart sink. He stood slowly, shaking. ‘It’s okay. I knew it deep down.’ He swallowed deeply. ‘So I guess this is it then. Goodbye Sheila.’

He walked away from the coffee shop. He stepped into the road, his thoughts sloshing in his head, his heart broken, unaware of a speeding car hurtling towards him.

‘Look out!’ someone cried.

Charlie froze, heard the roar of an engine. He couldn’t move; the fear exerted from every cell in his body and kept him frozen to the floor.

‘Charlie, move!’ Sheila screamed.

Charlie slowly turned, saw Sheila’s panicked expression. He couldn’t move, immobilised by fear.

Sheila darted from the shop and pushed Charlie from the car’s path. He stumbled; crashed against the curb of the pavement.

Sheila turned back, faced the oncoming car. It was metres away now. She closed her eyes, and took the sheer force from the car as it crashed into her.

Charlie groaned, touching his head. Blood laced his fingers. He looked at the pavement where he had fallen, then the curb.

More blood.

He looked back, the car carried on speeding down the road. Sheila was nowhere to be seen. ‘Sheila?’

Passersby gave Charlie weird looks as he scrambled to his feet, clutching his bleeding head. He could have sworn Sheila pushed him out of the way.

He scanned the whole street, but she was gone.

She’d disappeared into thin air.


BIO:
Pixie is a student who is new to the writing world, and writes when she can, where she can. Her work is mainly flash fiction and poems with the occasional short story. She is now however embarking on the mammoth task of writing a novel, and is finding it very daunting.
Pixie’s work can be found at http://theworksofpixiejking.blogspot.com

WHAT'S IN THE CELLAR? by Jeanette Cheezum

Jeanette returns with an adult mystery...

What’s In the Cellar?

1940: Deep in the woods of Georgia.

If it rained or snowed no one would come down to check on Lucy. She wore diapers, sometimes only one a day until she turned four. The weight of the soiled fabric made it easier for her to slip out of them. She stomped her feet in the urine puddles because it felt good to her feet. Sometimes she could play in the wash tub that sat under one of the windows. The man had dropped a hose down the wall and put water in there for her to sit in, once or twice a month. There wasn’t much else to do down in the cellar. Except hold onto her rag doll and lay on her old mattress on the floor.

Bugs crawled on her at night but somehow didn’t feed on her nasty skin. One morning the large doors opened and the man that came to see her brought a pot downstairs for her to use. The first time she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do when he handed her a pair of cotton bloomers. She stuck her hands through the holes and placed them against her sparsely covered chest. They felt nice and soft and she liked that.

The man shook his head, removed them, and pulled them onto her soiled bottom. Up and down several times in an attempt to make her understand.

Lucy looked forward to his visits and watched his every move.

“I brung ya some food.” He shoved a bowl and a quart bottle of water in front of her.

She learned to eat slowly and save some of her food. To make a safe for the food under an old crate was the only way to keep the rats from eating it. When the man turned to leave, she shook her head flailed her arms and grunted. He paid no attention and left her alone.

An index and middle finger was used as a game to skim along the cool cinderblock walls. She did this several times just before she ate the bread and beans or apples and bananas the man brought her.

***

The warmth from the steam heater kept the cellar toasty in the winter for years; in the summer the man would open the two windows at the top of the wall. She watched the mosquito’s land on her and when they bit her she slapped them until they quit.

***

Around the nineteenth summer the man hadn’t come to see her for two nights and two days. Only crumbs were left under the safe, and the chamber pot had spilled over the brim hours ago, but she continued to use it.

The door opened and remained that way. A taller man stood in the opening and gasped. The stench was stifling.

The light was bright from the doors being open so long, and Lucy shielded her eyes with her rag doll until they adjusted.

After some time the man came down to investigate. Would there be another body like he had found upstairs? He pulled the chain to allow more light then stopped at the bottom step.

Lucy stood still; then handed him her bowl and empty quart bottle.

“Oh, my God, I wasn’t the only one--How long have you been down here?”

Silence surrounded them.

“Come let me take you upstairs.” He reached out his hand.

She didn’t budge, only stared.

“It’s okay . . . I want to take you out of here.” He brought her to the stairs and tugged.

Lucy held onto her rag doll. Once outside, they climbed another set of stairs and entered the meager house, set in the privacy of the woods.

“We need to do something about your cleanliness, but first, let’s get you something to eat?”

Before he took his big hands and moved her to the kitchen table, she had paid no attention to him, looked around the room and touched things. She stopped in front of a picture frame showing the man and another person with long hair.

“You’re not going to talk to me are you?” He moved to the sink and wet a dish towel. Tried to wipe her face and hands but she pulled away. He relented and brought her some food and water. “You can’t speak or hear can you?”

Lucy made strange sounds and grabbed the food. Eating like someone that hadn’t been fed in a long time. He watched her and thought about his mother’s story of his father. How his father had walked away when he was born and never came back. How hard he and his mother had to work to stay alive. Now that she had died he came to have it out with his sperm donor, but had been robbed of that pleasure. He had found him dead in the middle of the living room floor. At least he had the pleasure of burying him behind the house. No funeral and friends for him, he didn’t deserve it.

Zachary left the room and went into the bathroom. He rifled through the shelf where the thread bear towel and washrags were kept. At least soap and shampoo sat on the window ledge.

Lucy followed him after he waved her on to the shower. The water sputtered and came out cold at first. He had her touch the stream of water. Now . . . how would he get her to clean herself?

He stripped off her tattered clothes and moved her into the shower. She grunted a pathetic cry and struggled with him.

He turned off the shower and removed his clothing. Knowing she would watch closely, he stepped inside the rusty old shower and turned on the water. He held his head under the stream and placed soap on his face. He smiled as he rinsed and held out his hand for her to join him. She stepped in slowly. He handed her a soapy rag. She didn’t know what to do so he rubbed her face again and moved her face to the water to rinse. She held her breath flailed her arms and shook her head.

What could he do to relax her? He continued to wash himself with the soap, maybe ... He soaped up his hands making a nice lather, and ran them across her shoulders and down her back.

Lucy seemed to like this. She made a humming noise. He massaged shampoo onto her hair but found it impossible to penetrate the layers and get to her scalp. She kept trying to look up to see what he was doing. The dirty water began to puddle and soap scum skimmed against their feet. She wriggled her toes.

He continued to rub her full grown chest and moved down towards her stomach. Should he? Well it would be the only way he could clean her. He tried to ignore the swelling in his groin.

He moved up to her ears and her neck. They were unbelievably soiled from neglect. He ran his hands under her hairy armpits and raised them to the warm gentle water. She smiled and made sounds that he had gotten used to hearing. He turned her around and let the water rinse away the filth.

Did he dare? Yes it had to be done. Mother always said “never leave a job unfinished.” He lathered her behind area and slipped in and out of the crevice. At least she had used toilet paper downstairs. He washed her legs and ankles and moved in close. Her body was against his and she didn’t move. He massaged her breast and used his fingertips on her rock hard, nipples. Then he slid his fingers down to her pubic area. He ventured slowly, so as not to alarm her.

Lucy hummed as he touched her mass of hair she giggled with a honking sound. He spread her legs just a little and lathered the area. She looked down to see what he was doing when he slid his finger into her young virgin area. Her humming became more intense. He rinsed the lips with a shower hose to remove the soap and stench that had gathered for so long. He turned her around. While finishing the job he lost his erection with an explosion up against her back. He shuddered and she never knew what had happened.

He assumed Daddy had never washed her or showed her how. The detective told him his daddy had taken another wife and she died giving birth. This must be the child. Lucy held her slender fingers above her head and watched the water bounce away.

No one would know - Daddy was dead and surely wasn’t looking down from heaven.

After he dried them off, it was time to teach her how to brush her teeth. He showed her how, but when her turn came she ate the toothpaste and drank the swish water. He laughed out loud. “I can see my work is cut out for me.”

“Now to cut that hair.” He opened the medicine cabinet to find only a straight razor, shaving bowl and cream next to a brush. “Well we may have to do this the hard way, if there are no scissors.

After three feet of hair and more under her arms he felt satisfied with his master piece. He found some clothes that must have belonged to her mother and helped her get dressed. They could live here no one would know the difference. Neither of them had anyone to love so he would teach her everything. She had already started to mimic him. But he would never kiss her if she wouldn’t clean her mouth.

Zachary showed her the mirror and she jumped. Lucy had no mirror so she never gave any thought to her appearance; large nose, sunken eyes, protruding brow, thin lips and matted brown hair.

He touched the mirror and then touched her face. Pointed to himself and then touched his face. “See, we look just alike. No one wants us, but now we have each other.”

“Let’s go to the bedroom and change the grimy sheets,” he wondered if she’d want to sleep on the floor. He led her to the side of the bed. On the other side he lay down and patted the mattress for her to do the same.

She stood still and gazed around the room. He crawled over to her side and pulled her down on the bed, then turned off the light.

All night she entered his thoughts. He moved closer to her wanting to feel her body against his. Daddy had given him something after all... a home and a woman that didn’t care how he looked.


Jeanette Cheezum 2010

BIO:
Jeanette lives in Virginia Beach, VA. She watches the rolling surf of the Chesapeake Bay for inspiration. You can find her work on several online writing sites; including this one. She has been published in three of Smith Magazines anthology books, and two of Six Sentences anthology books. Forthcoming: Harbinger*33*book.
Last year she published 160 online stories. She hopes to publish her latest novel this year.

ALL IN MY HEAD by Matthew C. Funk

Matthew debuts in style...


All In My Head


I lay back on the bed with my eyes closed and the duct tape in my hands and despite myself, I’m boiling. I just breathe in for a moment, hoping it will settle the heat. The scent of perfume invades me, floral and constant in its unfurling enticement.

She is lying next to me, Cassandra. I would swear to hearing her hair rustle in that aroma as it opens in a blond petal down her shoulder.

“You seem…what’s the word?” Cassandra’s voice germinates softly in the silence.

“What is the word?” I want to know. I don’t know.

“Vexed?”

“Not the word I’d use.” I don’t know the word I’d use. None fit.

“You’re worked up.”

“I suppose.”

“I wouldn’t be counseling you if you weren’t.” Cassandra reaches out as if to touch. She doesn’t, though. We don’t touch anymore. I grip the duct tape tighter in her place. “You’re worked up over your little girl.”

“Is it that obvious?”

She knows enough not to laugh at me. She just sighs. “You get this way more and more often. Is a frustration with her or with yourself?”

“Both.” I cop to it and my shoulders slump against the flower bed of the pillow. “I just get so uncertain with her.”

“And I always tell you the same thing.”

“Yes.”

“That you know what to do with her.”

“I just don’t feel it, though. I know the motions to make her behave, but I’m so afraid something will go wrong.”

“What makes you feel that way?” Cassandra quirks her head. “I thought you felt on top of the world with her.”

“I do.” I open my eyes, and there she is. Cassandra is golden as ever. The years have made that shine into a glow that is almost maternal in its constancy. “I do, and you’re right. That’s the point. But still—so much could go wrong. I look into her eyes and I see how fragile the control I have over her is.”

“Is it really about control?”

“Yes.”

“Control or love?”

“Control is love.”

“How do you figure?" Cassandra’s lips are a red editing mark.

“If you care about something, you don’t want it to go wrong.” Piecing together the explanation feels like putting a broken figurine back together, all porcelain meaning and the glue of logic. “You care for it, so you want it to do well, to be well, to go just right. You have to see to its needs and to keep it from things that are bad for it. You need to be in control.”

“Then what’s the problem?” She speaks so softly, it makes all the porcelain pieces inside me grind together all the more.

“The problems are numerous. They’re in the defiant way she looks at me. The way she doesn’t listen. The many ways that could lead her to make things fall apart.”

“I’ll ask again,” Cassandra’s voice deepens. “What’s the problem?”

And that does it; my teeth squeak from gritting. “I just told you.”

“No, you told me about your insecurities and your doubts. Those are obstacles you’re putting in the way of what you really want—your control.”

“No,” I insist. I brandish my hand toward the door to the den, where the girl—my girl, Vanessa—is lying on the couch, face turned away from me no doubt. “Those are real concerns. She could do something really, well, disobedient. Do something really harmful. She can hurt me.”

“Only because you think that way. Don’t you see?”

I look right at her. I look into that golden glow—that gleam like a trophy on a padded altar, stretched on the bed—all of it belonging to me. And I want to object. And I manage to. “No. I don’t see.”

But I do.

“Control is a state of mind, Walter.” Cassandra tells me. Every inch of her is a message fit to be minted as truth. “Everything you’re telling me, it’s all in your head. The fears and the weakness you see when you look at her—”

“I feel that weakness.”

“You also feel strong. You said yourself that is what so much of your relationship with her is about.”

“Yes.” And I do feel strong. Paternal. Almost perfect, in how I have planned everything, worked everything out, so that things go my way whether Vanessa likes it or not. “I just worry.”

“So long as you worry but still try—still believe in your control—then you’re in control. As much as you can be.” Cassandra shrugs.

“I see what you’re saying.” I nod. “I’m my own worst enemy here. I let her get to me, but if I don’t, if I just follow through…”

“Then you really are in control.”

“Yes.” Cassandra glides closer, seemingly without moving. I feel lighter too. I could slide away on the streetlamp beams outside the window; I could trip across the power lines and sail home on the sleeping stars. “Yes, you are in control. Not her. She’s just a disobedient girl. You’ve planned for that, over and over. You’re as strong as you believe you are. You can handle her.”

I am floating. Only my heart takes a plunge. “What about when I leave? When she’s alone?”

“You know what to do then.” Cassandra tells me.

She touches the knife on the bed, the big butcher blade bisecting the sheets between us. And I know.

“I know what to do then.”

“Vanessa will never be alone again.” Cassandra says, and she would know.

“She’ll be mine.”

“She is yours.” Cassandra tilts back and raises an arm toward the den. In the dim of the bedroom, the wound running from the top of her throat down to her pussy glows like a chasm. It an abyss. It is my crimson gift—that cut her away from having to live with the pain of what I did with her and sealed us together forever. “Now go out there and show her.”

Cassandra’s ghost vanishes. I leave the light on for her anyway. She’ll be back—a different bedroom, another disobedient girl nearby, another anxiety attack—she’s mine, after all.

I take the knife and the tape and my hard cock. I go to work on Vanessa. And as I see her crying around the tape mummifying her naked body, eyes begging me as dear as a daughter’s, I remind myself the one and only lesson that matters about being in control:

It’s all in my head.

BIO:
Matthew C. Funk is a professional writer in marketing for corporate America, a writing mentor and the author of several manuscripts that illuminate the beauty of human extremes. A graduate of the Professional Writing MFA at USC, his online work is featured at sites such as Powder Burn Flash, Twist of Noir, Six Sentences and his Web domain.

A DEADLY SECRET - by J.R. Lindermuth

Another author joins the 'fun'...

A DEADLY SECRET

What does she know?

That—even more than the identity of the person—was the question kept recurring to Karen Stahl as she stood holding the phone in one hand and nibbling at her lower lip with an overbite she usually was at odds to conceal. The phone crackled and an automated voice said, “If you’d like to make a call please hang up and dial again.” The comment was repeated again before Karen responded.

Like everyone, Karen had secrets. But were any so dire they should have prompted a call from a person she didn’t know? She hadn’t even recognized the woman’s voice and she’d been too surprised to reply before the caller hung up.

“I know your secret and I’m going to tell.”

That was the extent of the message. Short and sweet. Not exactly a blatant threat. Yet these simple words sent chills up and down Karen’s spine. Her hand shook as she replaced the phone on its cradle. She clasped her arms around her and bent forward to peek out through the curtains. A warm summer day. A child blithely peddling by on a bicycle. Mrs. Blackwell seated on her front porch swing and smoking a cigarette across the street. Nothing…

Karen’s throat suddenly went dry. Mrs. Blackwell. That old bitch. Was there anyone more nosy than her? Could she know…what? What could she know? I haven’t done anything. Though it was probably only her imagination, Karen thought she saw the woman glance in her direction. She stepped back away from the window, trying to recall the woman’s voice, trying to grasp what her neighbor might know about her.

The woman was always stationed on her porch, eyes peeled and ears perked for any activity she was quick to share with anyone handy to listen. Mrs. Blackwell actually knew about Reese’s promotion before Karen did. Where she’d picked up that tidbit was anyone’s guess.

Reese. Was it possible…no. How could she? Then, with a horror that chilled her like a wet spring rain, Karen remembered. It was last summer when she and Reese had been going through a rough time. They weren’t speaking to one another, not for weeks. They were on the verge of breaking up.

It was then, in a moment of weakness, she’d fallen prey to Larry Wagner’s charms. It was easy. He was so handsome, so caring and always there on the verge of her life. She’d known him since high school. She knew his reputation. But she had been so vulnerable.

The affair hadn’t lasted long. Only a matter of a week or so. Then Reese, realizing what was happening to them and not wanting to lose what they’d had, revitalized their love and brought Karen back to her senses. Things between them had never been better since then. They were happy with one another and the life they’d created together. Karen didn’t want to lose that.

But it was in jeopardy now.

During the brief interlude back then Mrs. Blackwell had seen her and Larry together. Karen had forgot all about it, thinking it of no consequence.

Now fear rose up in her like a wave. Mrs. Blackwell was going to tell Reese. She was going to ruin their perfect life. Reese grew up in this house. Mrs. Blackwell had always been his neighbor. The woman doted on him and was always cold to Karen.

Karen clenched her fists and looked out the window again. Mrs. Blackwell was coming down the walk toward the street. As she stepped into the road, Mrs. Blackwell glanced toward Karen’s house. Did she smile? Karen wasn’t sure but another chill passed over her.

Mrs. Blackwell didn’t have a phone. Reese had allowed her to use theirs on a few occasions in the past. There was a public phone box down at the end of the hill. Was that where the woman was headed now? Was she going to call Reese and tell him of Karen’s misadventure?

No! She mustn’t. I can’t let her.

Karen hurried to her front door.

The old woman was already out of sight. Karen’s hands shook. Fear gripped her like some angry beast. I’ve got to stop her. She looked around. Her car sat in the driveway. Karen staggered toward the vehicle.

Karen backed out of the driveway, bumped over the curb and sped down the hill. Tears welled up in her eyes and she brushed them away with one hand. There. Down at the bottom of the hill. Mrs. Blackwell had just stepped into the phone booth.

Karen tramped down on the accelerator. She bit her lip as the car bounced over the curb and plunged into the phone booth. Mrs. Blackwell’s scream arced over the sound of shattering glass and scraping metal.

***

“Mrs. Blackwell?” Karen asked.

Reese shook his head. “She didn’t make it to the hospital. What happened?”

“I don’t know. I must have passed out. I’m sorry—about the car.”

“Karen, I’m not worried about the damned car. I’m just glad you weren’t …”

Aside from a bump on the head, a split lip, bruises and a sprained ankle, Karen had come through the accident all right. She regretted Mrs. Blackwell’s death but at least her secret was safe now and Reese would…Why was he looking at her like that? “Is something wrong?”

He shook his head again, reached out and took her hand in his. “I can change the plans. We’ll do it later.”

“What? What can we do later?”

Reese squeezed her hand and smiled. “Your birthday party. I know you don’t like to make a fuss about it. But I wanted it to be special this year. I wanted all our friends to be there. I wanted it to be a surprise. It won’t be now but we can still do it later.”

“Birthday party?”

“Yes. Didn’t my secretary call you? She was supposed to let you know the secret was out and we were telling everyone.”


BIO:
J.R. Lindermuth has published seven novels, including three in his Sticks Hetrick mystery series. His short stories have appeared in a variety of venues, including Mysterical-E, Flash Fiction Offensive, A Twist of Noir, Crime and Suspense and Mouth Full of Bullets.