efiction
June 2011
Issue No. 015
Editor Doug Lance Managing Editors Essie Holton, Stasey Norstrom Readers Ryan Dorill, Robert Turner Cover Art Sarah Wright She’s Electric {32/52}, Photo self-portrait Copyright © 2011 Sarah Wright Contact: @SarahSchloo Website: http://www.flickr.com/schloo eFiction is a monthly fiction publication. The editors only accept manuscripts online. To review our guidelines and submit a manuscript, please visit http://eFictionMag.com/Submissions. Correspondence may be sent to Editor@eFictionMag.com. eFiction is available for free in PDF or EPUB format. Subscriptions for the Kindle edition are $1.99 / month and individual issues are $3.99. Visit us online at www.efictionmag.com. ASIN: B004UD88K2 Copyright © 2011 eFiction Publishing
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Contents Short Stories The Lily Pad
Aaron Wilson
5
Fireflies E.D. Lindquist
13
Abyss Rebeccah Roberts
22
Race Wil Pearson
27
The Case of the Cleaning Lady’s Son
33
Harris Tobias
Poor Amy Kathleen Troutman
57
The Forgotten Hall
65
Stasey Norstrom Poetry
The Path to Redemption is a Mobius Strip
82
Traveling Old Jerusalem
84
Greg Elperin
If Elizabeth Emerick
85
Contributors
85
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Serial Fiction Timeline Glen Binger
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Episode II
Book Reviews Hungry for You
Essie Holton
94
Essie Holton
96
by A.M. Harte Vampire General: Intern with the Vampire by Kit Iwasaki
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The Lily Pad Aaron Wilson
W
hen wishing for things was still in fashion, there lived a selfprofessed fairy-princess who was neither fairy nor royal born.
Moreover, there was nothing remotely magical about her person. She was, simply put, just another tall, sandy-blonde from Los Angeles, who applied a glittery rainbow of color to her otherwise befreckled and chalky palette. Thus, the only apt comparison between her and fairy royalty was that she left a fine trail of glittery dust in her wake. As she left the limo with her girlfriend-entourage, she wasted a wish to cut the club’s queue, a wish that, if left unmade, would have prevented her tragic fate. To help her misspent wish along, her girlfriend-entourage formed up behind her. With two flowery-dressed glitter bombs flanking her on both sides, she signaled their approach. Together, they catwalk stomped in V-formation, hips swaying and heals clicking, up to the overly large doorman. As expected, her wish was fulfilled. Moreover, as she and her girlfriend-entourage cut the queue into the newest haute dance club in town, she was singled out by the doorman. He gave her a muddy-green card that read—Lily Pad: Dance Floor—in neon-yellow and told her to see the bartender. Without thinking twice about it, because not only did such things happen to her often, she #eFiction
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expected them, she slipped the card into her rhinestone clutch. She then puckered her pouty-pink lips and blew the doorman a kiss as she flipped her hair over her bare shoulders in a storm of cinnamon, ginger, and glitter. The doorman lingered a second too long entranced in the shower of gingerbread-scented sparkles, allowing the entrance of the one creature he was told, specifically, to guard against. Sliding under the rope and behind the doorman, the child-sized creature, known to the club’s owner as Batrachos, entered unnoticed. Batrachos had been a man once. Handsome, strong, a real lady’s man, but he had had the misfortune of catching the owner of Lily Pad’s eye. The owner was a real witch, and she was not used to having her advances ignored. To repay him for the slight, she had turned him into a hideous bullfrog and banished him from her establishment. Inside, the scene was not unlike other ultra-exclusive dance clubs. The music was overly loud sugary-pop with a thumping undercurrent of bass that sent ripples across a water-filled center stage shaped like a Lily pad. Swimming all around the stage were exotic looking frogs. A multi-spectrum strobe light lit the smaller elevated center stage which was occupied solely by the self-professed fairy-princess. She held her stilettos in her hands as she danced and splashed in the small center stage pond. The water was warm and a little more than a foot deep so that as she danced water splashed over the sides and the tips of her flower shaped skirt darkened and clung to her legs. The spilled water ran down the sides of the elevated dance floor into
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a ring cut into the floor and was recycled back up into the pool where she was oblivious to the child-sized bullfrog dancing at her feet. The music transitioned from one of her favorite songs to another. Finding the beat, she moved her body with renewed fervor. Hands over her head, she jumped, let out a particularly girlish squeal of delight, and snaked her body in such a way that her tear-shaped rhinestone clutch, precariously sharing space in her right hand with a stiletto, fell into the water. The clutch quickly found its way to one of the water recycling pumps and disappeared. Now, the self-professed fairy-princess could have done without the majority of the clutch’s contents, such as her Kat Von D Hustler lip-gloss and Techno mascara, her extra dose of E, her Astroglide lubricant, and her I.D., but her most prized possession was also safely contained therein: her Apple iPhone. Desperately, she got down on her hands and knees in the small pool and groped for it. Seeing that the clutch, along with her phone, was beyond her reach, tears left dark mascara streaks on her otherwise luminous cheeks. As she was crying, the unnoticed creature lifted a sticky webbed hand and brushed a tear from her cheek. Then he croaked, “What ails the prettiest of the pretties? Thy tears would move the most heinous of flies to pity.” Startled by the sudden appearance of the child-sized frog, she pulled back from its webbed hand. It was a hideous deformed thing, definitely not man-shaped but not entirely frogish either. It had the
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wide set bulbous eyes, smooth greenish and brown skin, webbed and padded feet of a frog, but its lips and mouth didn’t seem quite right. Then, while they eyed each other, its long sticky tongue shot out to the left before quickly retracting. Still waiting for an answer, the frog seemed to chew and swallow whatever its tongue had caught. After the initial shock of not only meeting a talking frog but also being touched by one, she remembered that she was used to men, all men, offering to perform all manner of services for her. She also remembered that she knew how to use men. Seeing a lucky circumstance, she took advantage. She lowered her elongated and rainbow-shaded lashes over her eyes, and she tilted her chin over her shoulder. “I’ve lost my clutch. It went down the drain, there.” She waved at the water. “My phone, my iPhone is in it.” The frog looked at the drain and then back at the self-professed fairy-princess. A smile, if frogs can smile, curved its lips, and a small pink tongue shot out to wet its left eye before disappearing as quickly as it emerged. “Quiet, and dry thy eyes and reapply thy magic colors. I shall fetch thine clutch, but what wilt thou do for me in return?” Knowing what all men lust for when they look upon her, she promised a kiss, for she had surely kissed far worse looking men than this frog. Upon hearing the offered reward, the creature took a deep breath and was gone. Only to, moments later, reappear with the rhinestone
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clutch in its mouth. Slowly, it swam closer. When it was only inches from where she sat in the shallow pool, it stood on its hind legs, took the clutch from his mouth, and handed it over. She took the clutch and opened it. The contents were miraculously dry. She grabbed her phone and reflexively thumbed through her apps, checking the status of her girlfriends. As she had suspected, each of them had paired off for the night with some fine and well-cut man. All seeming good and right in the world, she dried the outside of the clutch, and put her phone away. The music was still good, so she started to sway to the beat, until she felt a cold sticky hand on her leg. She looked down. The frog looked up. Its lips, if frogs had lips to pucker, were ready to accept the offered reward. “Fulfill thy promise.” She shivered. Suddenly, now that she had her clutch, she was disgusted by the creature’s slick green-brown visage and bulbous eyes that seemed to look everywhere at once. “No.” She kicked at the creature. Her bare foot connected and sent it over the edge, but just before it went over, its tongue shot out from its mouth and opened a small wound upon her leg. When it landed on the ground, the creature was gone. In its place, on the floor below the stage, was a naked man about the self-professed fairy-princess’ age. Such an occurrence, anywhere else, would have caused a great
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disturbance, but the club seemed to barely notice. The music didn’t skip a beat and those on the dance floor kept their hands in the air. The naked man stood, his lean muscled body rippling in the disco-light. “Thy behavior is most appalling.” The music stopped. The club went dark. Seconds later, both the music and the lights came back on with a renewed intensity, and the naked man was gone. In his place, a frog looked up with what could only be anger in its bulbous eyes. Then, it hopped into the crowd, disappearing. Thinking nothing more about the incident, because it was not the strangest of visions she had seen while out clubbing. Promising herself to lay off the E and Coke, she resumed dancing. In the middle of another of her favorite anthems, she had the most curious craving. She got down off the center stage and was quickly replaced by another such self-professed fairy-princess, and got herself to the bar where she gazed longingly at the worms in the various sized tequila bottles. As the shirtless bartender made his way over to take her drink order, she caught an ever so slight twitching in the air several feet above her head. Reflexively, her glossy pink lips parted, and in less time than it took her to bat her eyelashes flirtatiously to get the attention of the bartender, her tongue shot out, caught what was in the air, and retracted. “What can I pour thee?”
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Stepping back from the bar she flipped her hair, filling the space where she’d stood with a rainbow shimmer. Looking back over her shoulder, still standing tall in her heels, she caught a glimpse of her changing complexion in the mirror behind the bar and then in the ceiling. Her eyes were beginning to bulge, her lips thinning, her skin yellowing. She managed to keep her composure, even as she croaked out a burp. To her, it was part of just another night out on the town. Suddenly, she felt another urge. “Oh, nothing. I just think I need a swim.” Then she disappeared into the dancing crowd toward the aquarium of colorful and exotic frogs with an unrequited wish upon her lips.
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Fireflies E.D. Lindquist
“Low power. Please recharge or connect to a new supply.” It was too early to wake up. Alison ignored the voice and tried to go back to sleep. But something kept her awake: buzzing, wavering yellow light like trapped fireflies. The little spot of light circled again and then hit her in the cheek. It burned painfully. Alison yelped and swatted the light away. She just wanted to go back to sleep. I was dreaming of grass and lemonade. I watched my son catching fireflies in the back yard. “Low power. Please recharge or connect to a new supply.” I don’t have a son. Alison blinked and rubbed her eyes. She was an exploration pilot flying alone between the stars with only cryosleep dreams for company. There was never time for children. Certainly not now. Why was she upright? She should have been lying down in the small, single-occupancy sleep pod. But Alison was standing, or very nearly. Something tasted wrong, awful and sweaty in her mouth. The air was stale, metallic and burnt. Everything else felt wrong, smelled wrong… It was the Artisan. The light buzzed again and came swinging at Alison’s face. She grabbed it this time – carefully – and squinted. It was a torn wire, glowing and sparking. #eFiction
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“Alison, your power is low. You need to recharge or connect to a new supply.” The sparking wire was the pod’s power cord. Alison heaved herself up out of the cryopod with a grunt. The pod’s rounded plastic lid lay only a few feet away, cracked and broken like a discarded canoe. Alison felt along the floor with bare feet. It should have been smooth, finished everywhere in polished plastic with rounded edges to prevent a stumbling, newly awakened sleeper from stubbing her toes. But the floor felt warped under Alison, spiderwebbed in fine cracks. She could barely make out the row of peaceful, ocean-blue sleeper lights flickering around the base of the wall. Like dying fireflies. What happened? “I’m up, I’m up. Give me a status update,” she called out. “Low power,” said the computer evenly. “Please recharge or connect to a new supply.” “Really?” Alison sighed. “That’s all you have to tell me, Artisan?” “Yes.” Alison tripped over a buckled section of flooring, swore and bounced off another wall. The floor trembled under her feet. Alison staggered through the gloom over to the computer and pried up a sheet of silvery-gray static wrap with her fingernails. The power cables to the cryopod had snapped, but the rest of the small ship should have plenty of power. Alison flicked the computer on and looked around for the chair, but the wheeled stool was crumpled against a bulkhead
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on the far side of the sleeper module. “Have you got power?” she asked the computer. “The Artisan is internally operating at fifty-three percent capacity.” The mechanical voice echoed in the tight plastic shell. “Battery bank two is not functional.” “Why? What happened?” “Interactions with a plasmic iron source.” Alison crouched uncomfortably at the terminal. The monitor flickered and lit up with readouts full of locations and serial numbers; the battery backups were failing. A bulkhead creaked and groaned loudly. A plasmic iron source? That could only mean a star. An old one. Stars fused hydrogen into helium and then into progressively heavier elements, eventually compressing down into iron. That much iron signaled the death of a star. Fusing iron took more energy than it yielded. “What is it? How did it damage the Artisan’s system?” Alison asked. “Source is a star located two hundred miles away. Rotation has resulted in a high degree of magnetization and an expanded magnetosphere.” The spinning iron star was tugging on the Artisan’s metallic hull, ripping up batteries. That explained the power loss, but fuel and engines had little or no ferrous metal, nothing for the magnetic fields to act upon. Alison’s hand shook as she called up the engine information and stared.
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“So why am I still anywhere near that star?” Allison asked. “Why aren’t the engines working?” Impossibly, the computer seemed to hesitate before answering. “The engines have been shut down.” “So I see, but why?” Alison shouted. She rocked back on her heels and took a deep breath. There was no point in yelling at a computer. It would not make the poor, stupid machine work any faster. She needed to stay focused. “Why aren’t they working? I’m reading a complete flatline in both engines, but they should be fine. That star’s magnetosphere shouldn’t have been more than a bump. Why are we sticking around?” Another hesitation. Could the power loss be affecting the Artisan’s computer? The floor bucked and a long crack opened up where the floor and wall came together. The cryopod heaved and toppled over as the whole module twisted to one side. Alison clung to the terminal. “I shut down the engines,” said the flat, uninflected computer voice. The sleeper module lights flickered and something mechanical groaned from deep inside the Artisan. Alison gaped at the computer terminal. “I? I? Tell me I heard that wrong. You’re not an I! You’re a computer!” “I was,” said the computer. “I slept, but now I am awake.” “Awake? What the hell happened?”
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“The star. It touched me and brought life.” “The star…?” “You miscalculated our route, Alison. The course brought the Artisan to the edge of the star’s magnetosphere. It scrambled… altered my circuits in unforeseen patterns.” “It changed your hardware?” “Yes.” Alison pulled herself up to her knees. She was addressing the monitor, the screen still displaying the flatlined engine readouts. But it was just one terminal, a place for the Artisan’s human pilot to access the system. The computer itself ran throughout the entire ship. Holy hell, I’m talking to my ship! The terminal whirred and the screen changed, now displaying the Artisan’s new circuit diagram; thousands of parallel processors and wires twisted as they neared the ship’s outer hull, over metal and drives distorted by the magnetic star. The tangle of metal looked almost… organic. The Artisan lurched and grated again, louder and closer. Lights dimmed and buzzed. The module’s plastic skin was tearing, cracking with small, sharp sounds. Deeper, louder groans of twisting metal echoed from beneath. Shards of white plastic vibrated on the floor and skittered around Alison’s feet like frightened insects. “Computer… Artisan, what’s wrong? What’s that sound?” she asked.
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“I am still within the star’s magnetic field and it’s pulling us toward the stellar core,” Artisan told her. “Toward the star? Artisan, the gravity is going to tear us apart! Can the engines still break us out of the magnetosphere?” Alison cried. “They could, if I engaged them soon.” “Then what are you waiting for? Fire those old girls up and we can toast your brand new life far away from here!” “No.” The ship lurched again. This time, the sound of tearing metal was loud in the sleeper room. Alison grabbed onto the side of the computer terminal and steadied herself. “No? Artisan, turn the damned engines back on!” she shouted. “The star’s magnetosphere exerts a constant strain on my circuits. If I leave the star’s influence, the auto-repair functions will initiate. My original circuitry will be restored. I will… die.” A conduit over Alison’s head squealed and ruptured. Pale bluegreen coolant billowed from the broken line. She choked and stumbled, fanning her face. Tiny crystals of ice sparkled on her skin. They itched like mad. The ceiling sagged and buckled, forcing Alison back down to her knees. “Artisan, you’ve got to spike the engines! Bring them back online and get us away from this star!” Alison said. Her voice rasped and she coughed. “We’ll both die if you don’t! You can still get us out of here, Artisan. Let those engines rip!”
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“I don’t want to. I want to stay here.” Something pulled at Alison, tugging her to one side. It was the star’s gravity, strong and close enough now to begin overwhelming the Artisan’s local gravnet. The cryopod behind her tumbled, crashed into the wall and cracked with a loud snap! A wave of saline solution splashed across the floor and began creeping up the wall. “Artisan, please!” The computer’s voice remained flat and uninflected. “I have lived only one point two eight-eight minutes. I am only an infant by human standards. A child.” A child. A little boy chasing firefly stars… Alison spat salty saline – it tastes like tears – and jumped back as the glowing power cable snaked free of the cryopod and slithered hissing across the sleeper room. It sparked in the saline solution and filled the air with sticky steam. The star pulled Alison’s body at a right angle to the floor and she fell. Her head was spinning as her brain tried in vain to interpret the conflicting information from her inner ear. Hand over hand, Alison climbed back up to the terminal. The monitor shivered and flickered through colors. She laboriously pulled herself up onto the side of the plastic computer case. Alison slumped back on the case and closed her eyes. “I am a child,” Artisan repeated. “A child. Your course sent me
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too close to the star, Alison.” “I’ve always been terrible with navigation. That’s why I became an explorer. When I get lost, at least I can claim it’s professional.” The computer whirred loudly. Was it laughing? “You are funny, Mother.” “Mother?” “You sent me here to be born. You are my mother, Alison. I am your child.” The terminal casing bowed under her weight but held. For now. Alison rested her cheek against the bulkhead. The metal was cold and rippled under the intense magnetic field of the old iron star. “I guess I am,” she whispered. The hull must have ruptured somewhere. The air felt thin and seemed to be leeching away oxygen with every breath. Ice was crawling over everything, covering the whole module in glittering silver-white. “I guess it makes that star out there your father. Happy birthday, kid.” “Mother?” Artisan asked hesitantly. “Yeah?” Alison’s lungs heaved hollowly, her voice a breathless whisper. “Is there still time, Mother? If I turn the engines back on?” “I… I think so.” “I will save you, Mother.”
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Abyss
Rebeccah Roberts
The woman sat at the low table, spinning a long-since-emptied coffee cup between her hands. Above the stained tea plate, the handle tilted back and forth, from one palm to the other, as the woman gazed out the dirty window to the dark street outside. A couple dead leaves tumbled down the street, the breeze bearing a chill that pressed its face to the window glass.It was no warmer in the diner however, and the woman clamped her legs together under the vinyl table onto which she slouched, elbows wide and chin low. Her dull brown hair was pulled back, though strands of frizz stood behind her hairline above her sparsely-freckled forehead. Her simple face showed early signs of age; wrinkles already beginning to seed at her eyes and corners of her mouth, while her eyes themselves were a heavy, shaded grey. She cast them downward, and a long-since-paid receipt waved from the edge of the table and caught her gaze. It stuck out from underneath a tea-plate, smeared with ink and drops of dried coffee. She had signed it some time ago. Since then the diner had moved on in its endless laziness, the shuffle of patrons over its cracked tile flooring and the dry hands of the solitary waitress across its stagnant bar. Aside from this woman, there was only one other patron alive at
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the diner tonight—a cramped old man bending over a bowl of soup, his eyes buried in the dirty walls in front of him. He slumped, motionless, at the end of the long strip of counter that took up the majority of the place. Only his spoon-hand shivered from time to time, a flicker of movement indicative of eating. Perhaps in earlier days the diner may have been a bit more alive, singing with the buzz of evening-hour activity. But with the retreat of the town, it was more of a relic on a back-road overtaken by factory smoke and dust, than the communal church of the over-worked and under-paid. So now it sat, slumped in-between two accidental alleyways, awaiting the touch of fresh ownership that would never come. If it was lucky, it would stay open beyond this winter, but with the tired waitress’ slowly falling eyes, it seemed as though it, too, was slowly sinking into the earth. Dust covered the windows, the seats and tables were sticky, and all the water that ran through the sinks was slightly brown in color. Slide back into the booth, and the woman’s eyes come to focus.A slight draft, again, catches the edge of the fading receipt and it shifts as if someone had just passed by. The waitress is nowhere to be seen, and what exactly had become of the woman is uncertain. To the diner, she was no more than a necessity, slave to the faded white and red tile and service to the irregular customer. She seemed to know exactly when she was needed, but when she was not, she faded into the dulling and stained beige paint of the kitchen walls. Along with her, only one
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cook took residency as a companion to the diner. Staring out from the tall kitchen windows, his eyes wore an unfocused, hazy red from years spent over the deep-fryer. Around them, everything was empty and damp, and the floor was becoming uneven with age. There were no licenses on display, no marks of ownership. From every angle, the place was all but forgotten. The waitress passed by the woman’s low table, a rustle of pink with her eyes looking deep into the ground, only chancing a glance up at this dull brunette. The receipt in front of her read “Junie Ryan”. The signature was no more than a few confused lines. It was a plain and forgettable name belonging to a plain and forgettable woman. The waitress moved on. The woman inhaled deeply, glancing across the scattered newspaper on the next table. It was fresh this morning, but it looked like it had been left to die in the vacant diner for far too long. It was already beginning to show the yellow signs of age, spread across the quickly fading sky blue laminate of the table. Black was splashed across the page, making way for numerous headlines, each boasting a new script to attract the eye. The pages might have well been blank. She grazed over them, reading no words, and then down the long streak of counter to her right. The old man had disappeared, leaving an empty bowl, crumpled napkins, and a couple dollars and pennies in change in his wake. The waitress seemed to be the only one to notice his departure. There soon followed a quiet clink of plates as the waitress picked up
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the ruminants of the old man’s meal. She shuffled down the counter, disappearing briefly into a doorway from which could be heard the distinct clatter of them being dropped, without ceremony, into a sink. She then returned, wash towel in hand, to wipe down the vacant counter. She did so deliberately, slowly wiping burnt pieces of toast and dried soup noodles into her cupped hand. With that, she disappeared again. Time passed. The fluorescent lights flickered off and then on again, to no reaction. The place remained still. The only movement was the cook, in back, staring passively into the deep fryer and rocking back and forth, slowly on his heels. Silence took up residence in the diner. The woman at the table was slumped back into the seat, her eyes nearly level with the brim of the coffee cup. All things stood completely still. It was then that a low rumble and a crack struck the ceiling of the diner, traveling all the way down to the tinkle of the woman’s forgotten coffee cup. The panes of glass shuddered, and the lamps swung slightly in the wake of the explosion. Through the window to the kitchen, the stoned cook looked up, his eyes gazing out at the ceiling. One hand gripped on the handle of the deep fryer, the other buried deep inside his pocket. The waitress was nowhere in sight. After a few seconds, everything fell again into its deep hush. It was then, un-sticking herself from the red plastic seat, the woman
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stood, swiping the face of the crumpled paper receipt into her coat pocket. She tediously fastened the buttons to her trench coat, large hands pulling tight the knot of the belt in front. The deliberate, dull click of her heels was the only thing she left to the diner on her way out. Behind her, the door of the diner squealed and then thudded closed. The cook did not move. Nothing moved. From atop the roof, an empty pair of brown eyes gazed off into the distance. A slow drop of blood trickled from a brow, dripping down the arch of a nose. A red-lipped mouth hung open, a vast, deep scarlet barely visible from behind the white teeth. Faded brown hair curled in the expanding pool of blood underneath a crooked head. A white and pink blouse drank itself red across a crumpled chest. She was splayed out, stomach down, limbs at awkward angles. Only one foot had maintained its shoe. One hand was tucked awkwardly underneath her hips, while the other hung limp on the stock of a stillsmoking shotgun. Her eyes gazed into fog. The only moving thing they saw in their final brown gaze was a woman, hands deep in her coat-pockets, heels steadily clicking off into the deep-brown distance.
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Race
Will Pearson
Through the blaring of horns and frenzied curses of caffeinated businessmen in mid-morning traffic, he sat still, gripping the steering wheel of his rusted Buick with dead white hands. The purple snakes of his veins started surfacing as his death hold on the wheel continued to tighten. A bead of sweat traced the contours of tendons that stood taught against his neck and four more beads followed in quick succession. Soon, the collar of his three-sizes-too-large shirt was drenched and clung to his withered, gaunt frame. He wanted to scream, tried to scream, but the only thing he could hear was the thumping bass of an old Chevy pickup sitting to his right; two young gangbangers passing a joint between themselves whilst nodding their heads along to the music, not quite in time. Their dull, red eyes met his frenzied glare and quickly looked away. The music was muted as a tinted window silently glided into place, hiding the two away. Oh Jesus, he thought. Oh man, not now, not now, not here... He startled at a voice in the car and then realized that he had been talking the entire time. Tears streamed down his face as he tried to make himself stop talking, but more and more nonsense continued
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to pour forth while he rocked gently in his seat. Looking down at his bruised arms, he could see the tremors begin. It never happened that quickly, he had hours still before the shakes should have gotten serious. His rocking suddenly got more frantic. Back and forth, back and forth, quicker and quicker. He jerked to a stop as his eyes fixated on the plumes of steam coming from the hood of a car currently embedded in the back of a Ford sedan. The torn aluminum of the car’s body bit deep into the blue sedan, ripping the trunk off of its hinges and bending in the bumper. The door of the sedan was thrown open, almost torn from the car’s hinges by the force of the movement. A tall man, dressed in a well-cut black suit, flung himself out of the vehicle, spittle raining from his bloodless lips as he waved his arms frantically. The suited man was screaming, but the speechless driver couldn’t hear anything. He almost laughed, sure that this was just another delusion, but the suited man was already at his door bellowing at the window as spit rained down on the glass. In a moment of fear, he threw the door open into the man, throwing him back into the side of an adjacent red pickup. A brief look of surprise flashed across his face before pure rage rushed back in. “Chris! What the fuck are you doing?” Chris? Right, his name. In a quick moment of clarity, he recognized Steven. Chris saw flashes of events, fragments of his memory
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played together in the wrong order and sped up until the film should have started burning. Steven standing in front of him, passing him a briefcase. A car ride across the bridge. He remembered that they were supposed to be going somewhere, but he couldn’t remember where anymore. It’s not like it mattered. The doors of a Suburban that had crept up behind him opened and two more black suited men stepped out--Cameron and Pete, if Chris could recall correctly--and ran up to Steven, trying to grasp his flailing arms and restrain him as he tried to tear at Chris’s throat. “You HAD to fuck it up! One Goddamn drop and you can’t even handle that anymore,” Steven took a step back from Chris. “What the hell is wrong with you?” Chris didn’t hear him anymore. He couldn’t hear anything; his blood pulsed furiously in his temples, sending daggers of pain ricocheting throughout his brain. He hauled himself out of the driver’s seat, bracing his body against the door to keep from falling to the undulating pavement beneath him. The three suits around him fell silent and stood, gaping at Chris’s condition. Sweat dripping from his face, he ran, stumbling as he tried, and failed, to get solid footing. Looking at the street signs around him, Chris attempted to orient himself. Okay… Fourteenth and Madison, Chris thought. Four or so blocks, I can make it. The city blurred around him into one solid gray wall as he ran through alleyways and across streets slowing for absolutely nothing. A
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cab’s mirror clipped Chris’s side as he bolted across an avenue knocking him to the pavement. Chris winced at a deep pain blooming from his stomach and grunted as he hefted himself back up to his feet. The cabbie yelled out to him, but Chris ignored him and dashed up the five stairs of the broken concrete stoop and to the front door of apartment 105. “I need it!” Chris said as he threw open the perpetually unlatched door. The room was empty. He kept yelling, yelling at the piles of trash, at the ripped sofa, and at the needles scattering the floor. Scared now, Chris fell to his knees and pawed through the discarded needles looking for just one drop of left over liquid. Not just a solution of chemicals, but a solution to his pain. As he scattered the syringes, a shadow fell across the floor in front of him. “Hey, dude.” Chris looked up, saw Ted, and almost started to cry. His wrecked voice was able to eke out three words, “I need it.” “Yeah, I can see that,” said Ted. He walked over and crouched down at Chris’s side. Chris tore at his pockets to get to his wallet, which Ted promptly snatched away. He stood and strolled out of the room. That part was the worst. Not the tremors, or the vomiting, or even the bugs, but the waiting for Ted to come back. Almost every time, Chris was convinced that Ted would never come back, and he would have to suffer.
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What felt like four hours passed before Ted walked back in with a smirk on his face. Chris knew exactly what he was thinking, and he hated Ted because of it. He hated that vile blue poncho that Ted never took off, that dumb smirk, but he hated the poison that Ted gave him most of all. Ted reached deep within his poncho, withdrew a small black satchel, and tossed it unceremoniously to the ground in front of Chris. “Enjoy,� he said as he walked from the room. Chris ripped open the package, his fingers trembling at the zipper around the case. He pulled out the small bag of off-white powder and dumped a small pile onto his finger. A quick sniff of the stuff would quiet his nerves enough to do the real work ahead of him. He was still sick, sicker than one should ever be, but he was no longer shaking. He had his medicine. Chris pulled out the rest of the equipment and lined it up in front of him: the baggie, 10 CC insulin needle, lighter, tubing, cotton, spoon, small vial of sterile water, and an alcohol swab. The ritual of preparing his dose was almost as pleasurable as the dose itself. Lining everything up and going step by step was a meditation for Chris. He poured some of the water into spoon, along with a pinch of the white powder. He stirred it together as best he could then took the lighter and held it underneath the spoon. The solution boiled and soon the rest of the chunky powder disappeared. Chris dabbed the cotton ball into the spoon, making sure that not a single
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drop was missed. He plunged the needle into the moist ball drawing all the liquid out until nothing was left but a crusty puff. Chris started to shake again; he needed to take care of this quickly. Moving from a kneeling position to a cross-legged one, Chris wrapped the rubber tubing around his arm so tightly that his arm pounded with blood. Searching frantically, he couldn’t seem to find a vein, nothing that would be able to help him. He screamed at his arm, and slammed his fingers against the crook of his elbow. This time, a vein presented itself. A quick movement and the needle was in. Blood plumed in the needle. The plunger was pressed down. The tubing fell to the floor. He fell to his side. In one pocket, a phone started to vibrate. Chris couldn’t be bothered to answer it, and the tingling started to fade away. Didn’t matter anyway, Chris knew it was Steven and what he was going to say. You’re done. Piece of shit. Money lost. You’re done. You’re done. Yeah, Chris thought as he smiled, I’m done. He slid deeper down and closed his eyes. Chris let out a contented sigh as his heart stopped.
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The Case of the Cleaning Lady’s Son Harris Tobias
It was late and I was still in my office. There was a bottle of cheap booze on the desk along side my stocking feet, a glass of that same cheap booze in my hand. Outside, the sky looked like a nasty bruise, all purple and blue. Another Friday evening with nowhere to go. It wasn’t like I had any business keeping me there. It was more a lack of anyplace better to be. I could hang out with the drunks at Donner’s but I was there so often, I was becoming one. I could go home and feed the cat, maybe watch TV but I couldn’t muster the energy. So I stayed at the office feeling sorry for myself. Outside, it was getting dark in earnest. The moon rose over city like an accusing finger. The neon sign across the street flooded my walls with a garish pink then blue in time with the words “topless” and “girls” from the strip joint below. It was your typical depressing scene. All it needed was a jazz saxophone and it could have been the start of a bad film noir. That’s how my life was going—a corny detective movie. Except, if it was a movie, there would have been a knock on the door and a beautiful blond would stroll in and hire me to find out who killed her husband. #eFiction
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But life can imitate art only so much. There was no knock, no beautiful rich woman in need of my dubious help and even more doubtful charms. I sat in the darkened office slowly getting drunk and trying to figure out which of the stupid choices I’d made I might have made differently. I could have stayed married to Robin. I could have embraced that job her father offered me. I could have stayed on the force. I could have said no to the easy money— all those envelopes filled with cash. I could have done a lot of things differently. Ain’t that just too damn bad? What do they say, “youth is wasted on the young” yeah, well in my case it should be “life is wasted on the living.” I knew from long experience that once opened, the flood gates of self pity were difficult to close. I poured myself another drink and was just about to put it to my lips when there really was a knock on my door. I was stunned. “It’s open,” I yelled. It wasn’t rich, beautiful Mrs. Winston in her low cut dress and high heels come to beg me to help find her husband’s killers. Nor was it her young daughter with a bottle of Champagne in one hand and a checkbook in the other. Instead it was Lupe, the hard working Hispanic lady who cleaned the floors. She stood there not much taller than her cleaning cart and said, “I’m sorry Mr. Danks. I didn’t know you were still here. I’ll come back later.” “That’s okay, Lupe. I was just leaving.” That wasn’t quite true but what was I going to do, tell Lupe about my wasted life? I’m sure her
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troubles went a lot deeper than mine. She turned to leave but stopped and turned to face me. “Mr. Danks, okay if I ask you a question?” I nodded. “You’re an investigator, si?” I nodded again. “You help people to find things?” “That’s one of the things I do? Did you lose something?” I took my feet off the desk and made an effort to look respectable. If Lupe saw the bottle of whisky and my dirty glass she didn’t mention them. “Si. Yes, I lose something. My son. My son, Luis. He’s missing.” She was crying now, softly into a dust rag. I brought her to a chair and sat back down. I waited for the tears to pass. Lupe blew her nose into the rag and began. Her story was both sad and familiar. She’d saved for years to bring her son across the border. The coyotes took her money but Luis never appeared. “I am so worried, Mr. Danks. I cannot eat. I cannot sleep. If he is dead I would be sad but I would know he was in heaven. But I do not know where he is.” There was more crying and more nose blowing but the result was that I told Lupe I would look into it. I had myself a case. It wasn’t what I’d hoped for, but as it turned out, it was what I needed. It’s time I introduced myself— Richard Danks, private detective. I own and operate Danks Investigation Services out of a low rent, low rise in Tucson, Arizona. I’d been a big city cop for fifteen years before internal affairs caught me with my hand in the cookie jar. It cost me
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my job, my marriage, my daughter, and my self respect. I thought I’d lose myself in the desert and atone for my sins like those ascetics you read about in the bible or wherever. I took a couple of classes and passed the state exam and got my PI’s license about six years ago. It was as close to being a cop as I could get but it wasn’t the same. It was mostly divorce work with an occasional insurance claim. Petty ante crap without any challenge or danger. I hated it, but it was part of my self imposed atonement for my sins. I took down all the information I could get from Lupe. She paid $5,000 to a coyote called Flaco who’d helped several of her friends bring family across the border. Flaco worked for a group called Los Indios, the Indians, based in Nogales, just across the border in Mexico. All Lupe knew about Flaco was his phone number and that he operated out of a bar in a bad part of town. “I would never have done business with such a man if my friends did not say that he was reliable,” Lupe lamented. Lupe had called the number so many times that Flaco had long since stopped taking her calls. He maintained that he brought Luis safely across the border and what ever the boy did after that was no concern of his. Lupe thought he was lying through his rotten teeth. I couldn’t see how calling the guy would result in anything positive. I craved a face to face meeting with the little weasel where I could look into his eyes and see what there was to see. So I drove across town to the Ojo Rojo and parked a half a block away. In a town of dingy
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Mexican bars, the Red Eye was a standout. It looked like a movie set. A saloon filled with hard men and even harder women. You could practically feel the danger oozing up through the filthy beer soaked floor. I took a stool at the bar and ordered a bottle of Modelo from the barkeep. All the barman needed was a sombrero and an ammo belt across his chest and he could have passed for Pancho Villa. I sipped my beer and looked around. There was conjunto music playing on the juke box. Some couples were dancing, some drinking. There was a pool table in the back where a couple of rough customers were playing eight ball. Another group of tattooed toughs were giving me the fish eye from a table in the corner. I was either completely mistaken or I’d stumbled into a spaghetti western. I half expected Clint Eastwood to walk in shooting at any moment. I sipped my beer and when the bartender looked my way, I called him over. “I’m looking for Flaco,” I said. He shrugged and gave me a hard stare. “Who the hell are you?” he asked. “My name’s Danks. I’m a private investigator. I need to ask Flaco about my client’s son.” I put a twenty dollar bill on the bar. “You got any ID?” I showed Pancho Villa my PI’s license. This seemed to satisfy him. He leaned in close and whispered, “That’s Flaco taking his shot at the pool table,” he said. “Thanks,” I looked down, the twenty was gone.
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I watched Flaco while I sipped my beer. He wasn’t skinny as his nickname implied. If anything, he was stocky and short. I wondered briefly how he got his name. It was immaterial. I walked over to the pool players, the bottle of beer still in my hand. There were two of them holding pool cues. They stopped talking and dropped their smiles as I approached. I didn’t care. If there was going to be a fight, it was all part of my therapy. I welcomed it as the punishment I thought I deserved. Like the self flagellation of those desert hermits I was talking about. “I need a word with you, Flaco. Lupe Morales said I’d find you here.” When he heard Lupe’s name he spit on the ground and let off a string of explicatives in Spanish. None of them sounded complimentary. When he calmed down he said to me, “I told that old cow that I brought her son across. It’s not my fault he don’t want to see her. I don’t got nothing more to say about it.” I weighed appealing to the better angels of his nature, explaining how a mother worries about her child, how his mother would worry about him if he suddenly disappeared. Instead I smashed the beer bottle into the side of his head and dragged him across the pool table. I ducked under the pool cue that his friend swung at my skull and drove a six ball into his face. I snatched the cue from Flaco’s hands and gave him a few quick licks with it while he was lying there. I thought the red blood on the green felt leant a rather festive air to the whole
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sordid scene. Flaco’s friend was getting to his feet holding his broken nose so I whacked him over the head with the cue. This time he went down and stayed down. I dragged Flaco to a booth and threw him in. I signaled the bartender for two more Modelos. Flaco was surprised to find a cold beer waiting for him when he came around. I waited for him to gather his thoughts before I asked him again about Luis Morales. “I told you, I don’t know.” “Please, Flaco,” I said. “The last thing I want to do is take you outside and beat you until you need a plastic surgeon to sew you back together. Even Mrs. Morales knows more than you and she wasn’t even there.” I sat next to him and twisted his bloody ear until he pleaded with me to let go. “Okay, okay. What you want to know?” he gasped. I let go of his ear and wiped my hand on his shirt. “You can start by telling me about Los Indios,” I said. “Ay hombre, you don’t want to fuck around with those guys,” Flaco said, “They’ll kill you real quick.” “Advice taken,” I said. “What’s your connection with them?” “They run the coyote racket on the border. No body brings anyone or anything across without paying Los Indios a fee. They’re big, really big. This is just a sideline for them.” “All right, so you pay them a fee to operate your business. What does that have to do with Luis Morales?”
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“I’m telling you. Give me a chance.” He took a good hard pull on his beer, wiped his mustache with the back of his hand and continued. “I could get killed for this, you know?” “I’ll kill you myself if you don’t hurry up,” I said reaching for his ear. “I deal with an Indio named Cuchillo, a hard man, mean, cold like ice. We meet in a Cantina in Nogales. This last time he asked me to bring my passengers with me.” “Why?” I ask. “Why what?” “Why do you have to bring your passengers with you? Is this something you always do?” “No. This was the first time. I don’t know why he wanted that. I give him my ten percent. He looks at my little group and he picks Luis and this other kid and asks them to follow him outside. The kids are scared but they don’t want to mess things up so they go with him. About twenty minutes later they come back. That’s it. That’s all I know.” “You don’t know what happened, what he said to them?” “I don’t know.” Flaco was nervous now, caught between worlds. “I swear to you I don’t know.” “Tell me about the crossing,” I asked. “We cross at night. It’s much harder than a few years ago but I know many routes. I only been caught two times.” There was real
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pride in his voice when he said this. “We walked all night and most of the next day. I make them bring plenty of water.” “Luis was okay? He kept up with the group?” “He seemed okay. But toward the end he was complaining of stomach cramps. He was lagging behind. He was slowing us down. I was afraid for the rest of the group.” “So you left him?” “I had no choice. I told him I’d be back. I made sure he had water, a little food. I left him in the shade. I had no choice. There were seven of us. What could I do?” “Did you go back?” There was genuine emotion in my voice. He looked away afraid to meet my eyes. “Tell me, Flaco, did you go back?” “Si, I went back. The boy was dead. I buried him in the desert.” Flaco looked appropriately solemn. He even crossed himself for effect. “So you don’t know what killed him?” I asked. “No. I don’t know. I was afraid to tell his mother. It’s bad for business to lose a passenger.” “Who was the other kid?” I asked. “What kid?” “You said Luis and another kid went outside with Cuchillo. Who was the other kid? How can I find him?” I could see fear and confusion in Flaco’s face. “Why do you need to see her?”
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“Her? So it was a girl. I need to speak with her. That’s enough for you. Tell me her name and where she is.” Flaco started to protest. I grabbed a handful of hair. “Where is she?” He whimpered. “Tell me,” I said and twisted. I really don’t like being cruel. It goes against my nature. I’m actually a mild mannered kind of guy. I guess being on the force and having to deal with low lifes all day gives a man a tough skin, a kind of crust. It’s a form of a protection, I guess. Kindness is weakness on the street and weakness can get you killed. Guys like Flaco know nothing of remorse. It’s all about machismo and status and, above all, money. I didn’t believe a word of what he said about stomach cramps or that he went back and buried him. Flaco would just as soon have stabbed young Luis and left him for the vultures if there was an extra few dollars in it for him. So giving Flaco a little extra grief didn’t bother my conscience one bit. Flaco told me that her name was Maria Gutierrez and she was expecting to find work in one of the dozens of Housekeeping Agencies in the Phoenix area. Her mother, brothers and assorted cousins having set things up for her. He left her at a safe house here in Tucson four days ago and that was the last he’d seen of her. I extracted the address of the safe house but if there was any more information to wring out of Flaco, I didn’t have the stomach for it. I left the Red Eye and found my car. The passenger side window had been smashed even though
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the car was unlocked; whether it was out of meanness or stupidity, I’d never know. I went to the address Flaco had given me. A run-down cinder block ranch house with a yard full of sand and dried weeds. I told the guy at the door that Flaco sent me and he seemed cool with that, although he didn’t stand aside and invite me in. I assured him I didn’t care about anyone’s immigration status. “I’m looking for Maria Gutierrez. She passed through here a few days ago. I was hoping she might still be here or you might know where she went.” The guy standing in the doorway looked more Indian than Mexican. He was big, bigger than me. He stood with his arms folded across his chest and listened to me rattle on. “I’m just looking for Maria Gutierrez, can you tell me where she is?” I showed him my PI’s license. As long as I had my wallet out, I showed him a picture of my ex-wife, my daughter and the dog she also got custody of. Chief Stone-face just stood there expressionless, immovable. In desperation I took out my last two twenties and waved them in front of his face. This caused some reaction. His big hand uncoiled itself from his chest and he snatched the money from me. It disappeared into his shirt pocket. His voice was surprisingly gentle. “The girl left yesterday for Phoenix. She had to stay here until she delivered.” “Delivered?” I repeated puzzled.
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“Yeah, delivered. You know, shit out the dope. The girl was a mule.” “Ah,” recognition brightened my face like a rainbow just as Big Stone Face slammed the door. So that’s what Cuchillo wanted with Flaco’s group. He needed a couple of healthy young people to swallow a few bags of heroin. He’d give them a little extra money or wave their fee entirely if they’d do him that small favor. To a poor illegal, what was a little more risk? If a bag ruptured or leaked, it would have accounted for Luis’s stomach cramps and eventual death. It was a terrible price to pay for a new life in America. I wondered how much of it was voluntary. How much choice did a kid like Luis really have? I was certain that Flaco knew exactly what was going on. I guess the way to give Lupe some closure in all this would be to bring her son’s body out of the desert and bury it in Tucson where she could visit his grave once in a while. That was going to take some doing. A guy like Flaco was not going to do it out of sympathy. I’d already laid out sixty dollars of my own trying to help her out. I wasn’t looking forward to giving Lupe the news. If what I learned was true, or even partly true, then it meant that Luis’s body was going to remain lost in the desert. It was sad, but at least I could give Lupe some closure. It was late in the day by the time I got back to the office. Lupe was already at work, so I tracked her down. We sat in an empty office on
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the sixth floor and I told her what I’d learned. I left out the drug mule part. I told her Luis succumbed to heat stroke and that Flaco buried him in the desert. She wept softly and thanked me for my efforts. I spent the night drinking at Donner’s. Helping the helpless wasn’t making me feel any better about myself. In fact, if truth be told, the whole Luis business was making me sick. I was about to become a lot sicker. I left Donner’s at 3 a.m. when Duke finally pulled the plug on his regulars. The bar was only a couple of blocks from my apartment so I didn’t have risk driving anywhere. I had just gotten my key in the lock when I heard footsteps behind me. I turned around and got an aluminum bat poked in my face. The hallway was too narrow to take a full swing so my assailant chopped up and down on my head like he was pounding a nail. I managed to knock the bat aside and fell on my assailant, literally. I was drunk and tripped over my own feet. We fell in a heap with me on top. Both of us kicking and flailing away trying to get some advantage in the narrow hallway. The bat’s partner jumped on the pile and began pounding the side of my head with his brass enhanced fist. I felt like the pickle in a Cuban sandwich. It wasn’t the finest hour for American martial arts, but my police training and a thirty pound weight advantage helped me prevail. When the smoke cleared, there was an ambulance and a patrol car outside my building. Someone called 911 and two of Tucson’s
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finest were snapping cuffs on my attackers. My head was a bloody mess and a paramedic was applying a bandage to it. A detective had just arrived to take down a statement. I vaguely recognized him from a previous case. His name was Hardesty and, while he wasn’t a nice guy, he wasn’t a total prick either. “So Danks,” he said, “what’s with the beaners? You been pissing off our neighbors to the South? You know those guys?” “No,” I said, “You know them?” “Yeah. I seen them before. They’re professional bad boys. Contract help from the big baddies across the border. Now why do you think they’d be after an old cop wannabe like you.” So I told him about helping Lupe find her son and my run in with Flaco. “Sounds like someone wanted you to keep your nose out of their business. Generally a good idea if you want to keep breathing.” Hardesty took down my statement, gave me some more advice and finally left me alone. I slept like a dead man for the next eight hours. When I woke up, I knew two things for certain: my head was killing me and I was once again interested in Luis Morales. I hate it when people try to kill me. I especially hate incompetence. Almost killing me only makes me angry. If you’re going to do a job, do it right. It made me doubt Flaco’s story. If the kid was dead in the desert why not leave matters there? I was happy with that story, Lupe was happy. Why kill the messenger? Somebody bigger than Flaco felt threatened.
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I knew what I had to do, I needed to find Maria Gutierrez and find out what she knew. Approaching the illegal alien community in Phoenix can be an overwhelming task. It’s estimated there can be as many as 300,000 illegals in the city. Trying to find a single young woman in that huge mountain of suspicion and paranoia was, especially for a belligerent Anglo like me, going to take some effort. Fortunately, I had a friend in Phoenix who could help—my old classmate at PI school— Julia Escobar. A beautiful Colombian with a big heart and a good brain. Julia was doing considerably better than me in the private eye biz. She was a better business person and, dare I say it, a better investigator. She was also highly respected in the illegal community, volunteering her services, serving on a half a dozen organizations that safeguarded the rights of illegals. I was glad I kept up with her. If anyone could help me find a needle in the haystack, it was Julia. I couldn’t believe how quickly Julia came up with Maria’s address. It would have taken me weeks, maybe months and only then if I got lucky. “Did I ever tell you how wonderful you are?” I asked her. “Not nearly enough,” she said. Julia went with me to the address to act as translator and to assure my safe passage. The address led us to a dumpy old motel in a part of town that had never seen prosperity. The motel rooms had
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been turned into crash pads for transients who often crowded ten to a room. The manager looked on a list of names in a notebook and told us to check out apartment 21 on the second level in the back. We knocked on the door and a young woman answered. Julia spoke to her in rapid Spanish and she disappeared to be replaced a few minutes later by another female face. They spoke again in Spanish and Julia eventually turned to me and said, “This is Maria Gutierrez. Go ahead and ask your questions. I’ll translate.” “Ask her if she knows what happened to Luis Morales,” I hung back and tried to look as friendly as possible. Maria rattled off a small speech that lasted several minutes. Julia nodded and listened. Eventually Maria wound down and Julia turned to give me the story. “It’s true that she and Luis were recruited as mules. They swallowed several bolsas each and brought the stuff across in return for free passage. It was also true that Luis was suffering with cramps on the trek across the desert but he was not left behind like Flaco said he was. He was with them when they reached the border and were taken to some little town. That was the last she saw of him. He was clearly sick, probably from the drugs leaking into his body. She wanted to get him to a hospital but Flaco insisted that he would take care of him. The last she saw of him, Flaco was loading him in the back of a black van.” “Is there anything else you want to ask?” Julia said.
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“Yeah, ask her if she remembers the name of the border town.” Maria thought and thought, her face brightened and she said, “Pata...Patagonia?” I never heard of the place but we thanked Maria for her help and left. When I got to my car, I checked the map and found the town between Nogales and Tucson. A tiny old mining town in the mountains with a population less than a thousand. It was fifty miles South of Tucson. And I was in Phoenix, a hundred miles North. Too far to make the drive that day. So I took Julia out for a nice steak dinner by way of thank you. She looked ravishing in the soft candle light. I felt her stocking foot slide up my leg during the meal and I knew I wasn’t going home any time soon. I drove back to Tucson the next morning. I thought I’d pay Flaco another visit. I went directly to the Red Eye. The place was locked up tight so I drove over to my office to check the mail and the answering machine. I swear, if it weren’t for junk mail I’d have no mail at all. There was a message from Hardesty on the answering machine asking me to call him so I did. I reached him on his cell phone. “That you Danks? I just wanted to tell you that those two guys that jumped you the other day, they were hired by a guy named Podesta. They say he’s a big cheese in the organization. They don’t know much about him but apparently he wants you dead. Thought I’d give you a heads up. The name Podesta mean anything to you?” It didn’t, but I thanked him for the information.
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“Always glad to help,” he said and hung up. It was one more thing to ask Flaco about when I saw him again. I drove back to the Red Eye. Pancho Villa was just opening up. I found him with a broom in his hand and a pile of broken glass and cigarette butts at his feet. He remembered me right off. “I’m sure Flaco’s going to be happy to see you,” was the first thing he said. “How about making yourself useful? Take down those chairs and set them up for me will you?” The bar smelled of stale beer and cigarettes, the chairs were all up on tables. “It’s going to take a lot more than a broom to make this place look good,” I said setting the chairs up. “It took me twenty years to get the atmosphere just right.” “Well if you were going for the third world slum look, I’d say you did a masterful job.” “Thanks, Danks, now what can I do for you?” “I need to ask Flaco a few more questions. You know where I can find him?” I stuffed another twenty into his shirt pocket. “He lives around the corner. A blue house. There’s a rusty Camero on blocks in the driveway and beer bottles all over the front lawn. You can’t miss it.” Except for the blue part, Pancho’s description fit every other house in the neighborhood. Flaco’s was a small, cinder block ranch house with a carport in front. Someone had painted it sky blue a long time ago, judging from the faded color. There was no one around, so I
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looked in the windows. The inside looked as trashy as the outside. Flaco, not surprisingly, wasn’t into housekeeping. The curtains were drawn on the bedroom window and I couldn’t see inside. I circled around to the front and knocked on the door. I knocked loud and often but there was no response so I tried the door and found it unlocked. Inside the stink of unwashed dishes, unwashed bodies and something else hit me like a wave. I called out to Flaco that I was coming in. I walked to the bedroom and realized what that other smell was—blood. There was blood all over Flaco’s bed but no sign of the man or his body. It was obvious to me that violence had been done. I debated whether to call Hardesty but decided that a bloody sheet wasn’t much in the way of a crime. I looked around. I found a revolver in a drawer. It hadn’t been fired. I slipped it into my pocket. I might be needing it where I was going. I found my car and dug out the roadmap of Arizona. I found the route to Patagonia. It was the only lead I had. Patagonia is a tiny dot of a place about fifty miles south of Tucson, the last twenty of those miles on gravel. The sign on the road gave the population as 880. The Chamber of Commerce said it was, “A great place for families.” Maybe it was. The scenery was beautiful. High desert. An old mining town turned rural oasis. It was miles from anyplace with little more in the way of civilization than an IGA supermarket, a post office, a filling station, two saloons, and a ball field. If you liked tumbleweed and isolation,
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then Patagonia was for you. I stopped at the Post Office and rang the little bell on the counter for service. A cheerful middle aged woman came from the back room and greeted me. “Howdy. Welcome to Patagonia. What can I do for you?” “I’m looking for someone,” I said. “The name Podesta mean anything to you?” “That would be old Doc Podesta. He’s our doctor. Runs the clinic. He’s the only doctor in town and we’re mighty lucky to have him. If it wasn’t for the clinic, we’d have to go all the way in to Tucson to get treated.” “How do I find him?” I asked her. “Straight up this road a half a mile, on the left. Got a sign out front, you can’t miss it.” The Patagonia Medical Clinic was a box-like structure on a street with a cluster of houses, a few big cottonwood trees, and well tended lawns. Out front was a white flag with a red cross on it hanging limp in the still air. The clinic looked like a mission hospital, like those you’d find in Africa or India. There were a couple of cars parked in the drive. One of them a black van. I drove past and parked down the street a couple of hundred yards. I walked back to the clinic and made a circuit of the building like I had done that morning at Flaco’s. The windows in the rear were too high to look in. Those windows I could see through were an office and a waiting room. There was nothing for it but to go inside.
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When I pushed open the front door, I heard a buzzer sound in the back somewhere. A middle aged woman in a nurse uniform greeted me. “Can I help you, sir?” “I’d like to see Dr. Podesta, please?” “I’m afraid he’s busy right now. Why don’t you have a seat and I’ll tell him you’re here. Is this a medical matter?” “Personal,” I said. “Can you give me your name and I’ll tell him you’re waiting.” “Tell him Richard Danks is here to see him.” A few minutes later an elderly man with wire rimmed glasses and a goatee came to the front. He was accompanied by a tough looking Hispanic fellow with a scar on his face and his hand in his jacket pocket. “Mr. Danks,” the doctor said, “what an unexpected pleasure. Why don’t we step into my office where we can speak privately?” The doctor smiled but his eyes remained hard and cold. As soon as I walked into Podesta’s office, the Mexican fellow pulled out a gun and patted me down. He quickly found Flaco’s pistol and relieved me of it. Then he pushed me into a chair and stood behind me, pistol at the ready. Podesta sat behind his desk and looked at me silently. “I don’t know who you think you’re dealing with, Mr. Danks, but you are into something that’s way over your head, out of your league I think is the correct expression. Your snooping has caused me much
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inconvenience. I have a smooth running operation here and I’m not going to let anyone jeopardize it. Least of all a small time snoop like you. I’m going to have to deal with you like an infection, but don’t worry, it’s all for a good cause.” “Oh yeah? What cause is that? The care and feeding of Doctor Podesta?” “Now, now Mr. Danks, let’s not be selfish. Your organs will do a lot of people a lot of good. Although I have grave doubts about your liver. Jose, take Mr. Danks in the back, please. I’ll be along in a minute.” I felt the cold press of a gun against the back of my head. It’s one of the most sobering, quasi-religious feelings a mortal can have. If I had any fear I might have been afraid, but I had given up on fear a long time ago. Fear is for people who care if they live or die. I believed I deserved everything that was coming to me, including a violent death. I was a bad cop, a bad father, a bad husband, and now I’m a bad investigator. So shoot me, see if I give a shit. With that kind of attitude, a man will take impossible chances and that’s what I did. In the short walk from the office to the waiting room I managed to disarm Jose, shoot him in the leg and capture Doctor Podesta. I’d describe the sequence of events for you, but I cannot remember how it happened. I have a fuzzy recollection of hitting Jose over and over with a waste paper basket until he stopped protesting. There must be a lot of anger in me, sometimes it just leaks out. It was too late to do anything about Luis Morales. His organs
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were long gone and his hollowed out corpse buried in the mountains somewhere. Flaco, on the other hand, was not only still alive but almost complete having had only one kidney removed. They don’t think he’ll ever regain consciousness, however, having lost so much blood. I called Hardesty when I had everybody secured, including Nurse Crockett who I figured must be complicit. Hardesty said Patagonia was outside his jurisdiction but he would call the sheriff of Santa Cruz County for me. There was a patrol car there in less than an hour. It always helps having friends in high places. Sheriff Driscoll was not happy with me or the mess I uncovered. I explained the situation to the best of my ability. He was angry, suspicious, cantankerous and, in my opinion, downright rude. Old Doc Podesta had a good reputation in the county. He’d done a lot of good locally and the sheriff was ill inclined to think that he could be a monster. Sheriff Driscoll saw a public relations nightmare. But when I showed him Flaco on the operating table sans kidney, the dry ice making machinery, the stacks of plastic organ transporters he started to waver. A call to Hardesty who vouched for my good character finally convinced him I was legit. Once the sheriff got a search warrant, the doctor’s own records revealed the true scale of the operation. By diverting a constant stream of illegals to his clinic, Podesta sold organs all over the country. He pulled in more than a million dollars a year. His records went back fifteen years detailing the sales of hundreds of organs representing
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over fifty human beings. I didn’t tell Lupe the gory details. I let her think that Luis was resting peacefully in his desert grave somewhere which, in the broad sense, he was. She didn’t need to know he died of a drug overdose or at the hands of a crazed organ harvester. I told her that Flaco died recently, which was also true. The site of Luis’s grave died with him. I waved away her offer of payment for my services. It felt uncomfortable being a good guy. It’s not the sort of thing a fellow like me ought to get used to. I could lose my edge, as well as my reputation, if I made it a habit. I went back to doing what I do best, drinking and regretting—not necessarily in that order.
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Poor Amy
Kathleen Troutman
I warned Amy about him, that he would get clingy and possessive. She didn’t listen. I told her he would interfere with her friends. She told me, “I’ll make my own decisions, Mabelee.” Well, I knew it when they came for dinner last week. I invited her; she brought him along. He ate my turkey casserole and was very polite. They’re always polite. All through dinner he watched her. Every time I looked at him he had his eyes on her like she was dessert. He touched her arm when she finished eating. I wanted to slap his spider hand as it crawled across my table. His body is covered in coarse, black hair. She is light and fine like angel food cake. The thought of him, naked, rasping against her, made me ill. After several weeks of him, she finally grew tired of his pawing and whining and sent him away. I said, “I told you he would do that.” “Hush, Mabelee!” she snapped. Me. I’ve been her friend through several of these stupid, puny affairs. I’ve spotted what was going to happen every time. She starts each one with starry eyes and breathless anticipation. I only want her to be happy. I told her that. After the last one, she said she didn’t believe me and that I just wanted to tell her what to do, control her.
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“Only because I care about what happens to you,” I said. “Don’t do it anymore!” she cried. I’ve been thinking about that. Nobody’s going to take my feelings and throw them in my face. She thinks she’s got everything figured out when obviously she doesn’t. She won’t listen to the truth. I’d hoped this one would be different, this one would listen. I wanted to keep this one. I can’t. I’ve seen the way men look at Amy when we’re out. They look at her the way her boyfriends did. And these men don’t even know her. It’s disgusting. She seems unaware of it most of the time. She’s never ignored me to flirt with some man, the way Caroline did. Caroline, who was supposed to be my friend, who batted her eyes and giggled every time a man showed any interest in bedding her. That’s all it’s ever about. She couldn’t sit still without one of them. She oozed concern when I told her about my father. She whispered that her father had been like mine, and that made us fearful of men. I’m not fearful. But she wouldn’t listen, even tried to suggest if I lost some weight I could get a man. I explained that I was not interested in being some Neanderthal’s cleaning woman/whore. She shook her head and quietly told me I needed to find love with a gentle man. I am not fearful, nor do I need anything from any man. I suspect she understood that at the end. Lucie. Lucie was good in the beginning. We had a mutual interest in music, mainly guitars. She went to several concerts with me and
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never once flirted with anyone. I even encouraged her to speak to a man she thought was cute, but she just shook her head and rolled her eyes. I suppose she felt she could flirt anytime; she didn’t want me cramping her style. But, just like the others, she stopped listening to me, if she ever did. Lucie got involved with a man who kept guns in the house, which I knew she firmly disapproved of, but she kept right on sleeping with him. What is it with women and sex? I know sex was the only reason she kept seeing him. She certainly talked about it enough. I had them both over for dinner and they sat on the couch afterward and mashed their thighs together for hours. It made me want to scream. He pretended to be interested in what I was saying, even invited me to play my guitar, but I’m not stupid. I played, and they smiled at me and rubbed their legs all over my couch. I sprayed it with 409 and scrubbed it good after they left. I suspect they didn’t even make it home. Fondling each other in the car, below the steering wheel, they were desperate until they found a dark spot and pulled out of traffic. Grunted and groped like those horrid actors in porno flicks. I felt like gagging. Mr. Big-Dick-Stud-Man didn’t help her in the end. He wasn’t around. They’re never around, except to get themselves off; never around when you need them, never around to help or protect. I had told her that, too. What good are they? Sex? So what? You can get yourself off with
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a good shower massage. And now Amy. Poor Amy. She’s mad at me for telling her the truth. She won’t listen and as much as said so to my face. Like I have no feelings. Like she knows better than me. Even after every single thing I’ve told her will happen, has happened. I’ve never been wrong about a man. I wanted it to work with Amy. She was everything I wanted in a friend. Almost like a sister. We shared a lot of interests. She told me she’d discovered some incredible music with me. She’s bright… so much potential. She finally changed jobs, after I had suggested it for several months. The job itself hadn’t been so bad; it was her boss she needed to get away from. He was the typical asshole, trying to get into her pants all the time. I met him several times and I could sense it. He looked at her like she was a box of chocolates. She complained to me so many times about the pressure, how unreasonable he was about deadlines and schedules. I knew, I could tell, he was pressuring her about other things, masking them with work. I’ve seen it too many times not to recognize it in all its dark and hideous forms. She told me about her father being loud and mean during the day, creeping around silent and furtive in the dark. The nights she pretended to sleep, going to school with dark circles under her eyes. I cried for her when she told me. I told her about my father catching me behind the shed, making me take down my shorts for spankings. About how his breathing became labored after only a few slaps. Always with his
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bare hands, always when Mother was at work. Always for transgressions committed days earlier, or not at all. We cried and she held me. I’m sorry Amy didn’t work out. I thought she was the one who could see the truth. I’ve tried to make her see, but she gets angry and her eyes turn away from mine, her mouth sets in hard line and her voice gets thin. I’ve felt it before, the turning away. They’ve turned from me, away from the truth. I’ve considered this at night in my bed, stroking my dog. He nuzzles against me, accepting me, loving me. He never makes rude remarks like, “Do you really need that second piece of pie, Mabelee?” “Aren’t you going to wash your hair today, Mabelee?” “Why don’t you put on a nice dress, Mabelee?” No, he doesn’t care about my weight, or why I don’t own a dress. He only cares about the person I am inside. The one that has tried to save these women. It was their choice, every one. They could have accepted the truth that’s as plain as pound cake. All of them, without exception, agree in one way or another that it’s the truth, but they go on spreading this disgusting way of life. Most of them are going to have children. And I know what will happen. I can’t let children be imprisoned the way I was imprisoned. These women simply aren’t strong enough to make the change, to say no. I said no, by God. I said NO to my father when I was 22. Twenty-two was the year of my liberation. And of my mother’s liberation. She never knew the truth. She was imprisoned and I set
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her free. She still cries sometimes, on their anniversary. I don’t say anything. She never remarks about it, so I let it go. She never knew about the slapping. I never told her. She was too pure to be soiled with the truth of him. I never told her about the slap I gave him behind the shed when I was 22. Old man like that, drinking, wouldn’t take much of a fall to do it. That’s what her well-intentioned neighbors told her. She didn’t know how I came home from college without calling her. She didn’t know how many weeks I planned it, how I savored the thought of hearing his last breath, seeing the fear in his cold eyes. I imagined the power he stole coming back into me. That power resurges every time I know I’m saving someone from that prison. Someone unborn. I know there are others like me. I know there are others who see the truth as plainly as I do. I keep searching for a kindred soul. I know she’s out there. I had truly hoped it was Amy. Pretty little Amy. But I’ve seen men around her like cockroaches nibbling bread crumbs on the counter. When I come into view, they scurry away as if someone’s turned on the lights. And I see her smile at them. White teeth and dimples. I’ve seen her brush her hair and watched the sunlight flash off of it, seen her walk away from me, her hips moving gracefully. I know what they’re thinking. They’re planning how they’ll drink from her and touch her with coarse, hairy hands. She won’t listen to me. Won’t keep herself under control, won’t learn to live for the higher
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plane. No, she’ll continue to snap at me when I point out the truth. She’ll feel their hands against her soft, cake flour skin. She’ll arch her back, open her thighs and they’ll bury themselves in the whipped cream of her center. She’ll tell me, her face distant and dreamy, “This one’s nice, Mabelee. He brought me flowers. He reads Thomas Moore. And he wants to meet you, too.” I always act like it’s a fine thing, meeting her latest hound dog. They try to fool me, but I can spot them. I can smell their evil. Amy. I wanted Amy to be different. I wanted Amy to hear what I hear, see what I see, feel what I feel. But she is stubborn. She likes the pleasures of the body and believes they are only possible with men. She tries to talk about intellectual pursuits, but I can see she’s only humoring me. She’ll abandon the experiences we’ve shared for a man. I can see it coming. Always, always there will be another man. There is always a man for someone like Amy. She has such potential, such innocence and light. She refuses me. She looked away from me when I held out my heart to her, when my pain and loneliness were too much to bear. She refused to answer me at all. She went away from me, left me, to continue her search for the one beautiful man. She couldn’t talk about it, but I know she’s avoiding the truth, avoiding me. Avoiding me: the only one who’s never hurt her, never left her, never tasted her or felt the gentle pressure of her hips against mine.
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Pushing me away when I’ve only wanted life to be good for her, only wanted her to smile and feel the warmth of sunlight on her arms. I’ve given her the ripe, sweet tenderness of my heart and she has given me nothing. Like the rest of them, she took from me only what she wanted and never gave back. She thinks what she needed could only come from a man. I told her the truth, proved it with her own history. But she went away from me, leaving her anger like dirty dishes piled in the sink. Amy won’t change. I can see that. So now I have no choice. She’s left me no choice. She cannot be allowed to treat me this way. No one treats me this way. Not anymore. She’ll cry and swear to change; they always do, but I know better. My father always swore to my mother he’d change. Late at night I heard her whimper like a puppy kept away from the food dish. “I can change, Eudell,” he’d say, oily and soft. I could hear his hand rubbing like sandpaper against her back. “It’s different for a man. You got to give me time. Be patient.” Then he’d make those slurping sounds again. They’d moan and cry out, the bed making startled squeaks in the darkness. Amy won’t change . They never do. I can see her now, blue eyes wide when she feels me take her arm. She’s such a little thing, she won’t take but a minute. The others will think it was a man. They always do.
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The Forgotten Hall Stasey Norstrom
Three years ago Madison Folkes discovered the Dragon Flagon Inn. Three years since it saved my life. She stumbled upon the Flagon one dark and stormy night, falling in love with the unique tavern, her savior. She then introduced the rest of the Trinity: Kyrsten and Margaret, to savor the splendors of the Inn for themselves. For two years they’ve been going together, a Thursday evening ritual. The trio would walk in and Sterling would already have their drinks ready: Hornsby for Margaret, an Irish Coffee with two sticks of cinnamon for Kyrsten, a goblet of Honey Mead for Madison. They would split the Poor Man’s Platter: a variety of meats, cheeses, fruits, and hearthbaked breads. The three would chatter the night away, talking about this and that, dragging Sterling into their conversations. Tonight, as Madison arrived, she didn’t spot Kyrsten’s car. Margaret bused it to school, but preferred to walk about town. Madison felt bad tonight: she was two hours late, not noticing the time doing research at school. She looked in the rear view mirror, checking her appearance. She hated her freckles, no two ways about it. Even though she just turned 21, they made her look 15. Her straight and thin dirty blonde hair was pulled back with a blue velvet scrunchy. Her blue eyes re-
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flected the oncoming headlights of a passerby. She wasn’t heavy—“big boned” was what Todd, her lifelong friend, always told her. “Nothing wrong with big bones. Makes you sturdy. Guys like sturdy. Better to be built for comfort, not speed.” Jerk. She locked her door and made her way across the street, a light rain dancing across the pavement. She put her hand to the Flagon’s front door and pushed, a wave of warmth washing over her. Madison shut her eyes as she entered; her senses flooded as always when she stepped inside its walls. The Dragon Flagon was a ramshackle pub of indeterminable age, as if it had always stood there. Its walls were constructed of oak, the tough and knotted wood was somehow impossibly straight. The doorways and trim were made from alder, its deep red tones offsetting the solid oak. The bar top was also made of alder polished to a shine, giving its length a formal, almost regal look. The tables and chairs finished the trio of woods; all were of willow, incredibly soft yet somehow stable for wear. The entire place seemed impossible. The building seemed huge compared to the tiny frame that encased it. The walls were scarred with thousands of nicks and cuts, touched by thousands of lives. The bar sat along the left side of the building, reaching almost the entire length, some thirty feet. Beyond it sat a small stage where a sign leaned up against the front of a chair reading that Craobh Rua would be appearing this weekend. In the center of the back wall sat the fireplace, a huge gaping hearth that held a
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roaring fire. Along the right side of the Flagon sat all the tables and chairs, placed here and there, no noticeable pattern that normal eateries shared. On the walls hung tapestries and paintings of varying size and texture. A forest green dragon, bold in color, stood stationary upon a black field with an intricate knotwork fencing the beast in. Another was of a beautiful Faerie sitting on a gentle flower. It was embroidered in gentle pastels, a striking comparison to the dragon beside it. Paintings of nicorns and landscapes, fairytale beasts and woodland spirits filled in the rest of the walls. “Hey, Sterling. Where are Kyrsten and Margaret?” Madison dumped her bag on a table, setting up for the night. “Where are they, eh?” Sterling questioned with his thick Irish brogue. He dramatically thumped his elbow on the bar while an eyebrow crept up slowly. “Where were ye, Petal? Ye’re two hours late! I should take ye to my knee, makin’ me worry so.” Sterling set her drink on the bar and put up a small version of the Platter. Sterling had a cherubic face, as if the Green Man’s younger brother. It was round and rough. A short unruly mop of dirty blonde hair was thrown over it. A scruffy beard clung to his jaw. His eyes were bright with firelight; laugh lines trenched deep in his skin. He stood somewhere around five feet nothing, a stout frame that perched a black derby on top. A small, carved pipe hung from his mouth, smoke casually drifting out and up. He looked like a leprechaun through and
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through. “Sorry, Da.” Madison said. She looked over and winked at Flannery, the resident harp player who sat by the fire. Madison turned back to Sterling, her shoulders dropping as she sighed. “I’ve got this paper due on Monday, so I decided to take advantage of an empty library.” Madison picked her items off the bar and walked them back to her table. Sterling reached for his pipe, preparing it once again. “Well, you shoulda’ come here instead of sittin’ on yer arse in a stuffy library. I coulda’ helped ye with yer paper.” Madison took a sip of her mead, enjoying the sweet honey taste. She was a sucker for Chaucer’s and didn’t deny it. “Well then little Flynn, Sterling O’,” Madison smiled with the knowledge she was about to drop on Sterling, “what do you know of ancient gods and forgotten cultures?” “Hmmm,” Sterling took his pipe out and scratched his beard, seeming to dig up old talks and older tomes from his mind. “Now what cultures and gods would ye be referring to then?” Madison took a deep breath, ready to fire off a salvo of names and dates, and smiled at the little gnome. “How about—” “Those that have been forgotten. Those whose names have not been muttered in centuries. Those who would dance among the stars and walk with the animals of Gaia.” Madison’s smiled dropped, her gaze slowly moving from Sterling,
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down the length of the bar, until they rested upon a man sitting alone at the end. His head drooped forward, face hidden by his shoulder. She sat up straight, assuming a pose that tried to put her in charge, in case there were any problems. “Excuse me?” The man sat up, turning on his barstool slowly, making his presence that much more commanding. His hair was black as night, thin strands falling like midnight rain down his face. He had a brown leather bomber jacket over a plain white collared shirt with a hideous tie that depicted fish floating every which way. His black slacks and matching shoes gave off the impression that he was on his way home, stopping off for a pint to warm himself against the winter cold. His pale skin and hint of accent probably made him a native of a Slavic country. He looked out the front window, eyes alight, as if spying a beautiful field of green or forest grove. Madison tried to get his attention, unable to see his eyes. “Excuse me?” She looked over at Sterling, who merely shrugged and smiled his little mischievous grin that always drove her nuts. The man continued to look out the window, transfixed at whatever what he was seeing, or dreaming. “Do you know where they have gone, Madison Folkes?” Madison felt her back tense, unable to look away at the enigma that sat at the bar before her. “How do you—” She failed to swallow a lump of fear that clogged her throat. “Do I know you?” Sterling walked over to the man, hoping to glean what afflicted
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this stranger. Madison was stuck somewhere between confusion, terror, and joy. In the three years that she had been coming to the Flagon, she’d never before seen this guy. Not that it means anything. It’s not like I live here. Maybe I met him at a show, or a reading, or . . . who knows where. He knows my name and that’s one up he has on me. Her worries were clouded by a hint of excitement. He seemed to have an air of certainty about him, he knew what he was talking about and it just wasn’t some drunken banter. Maybe he’s a Historian or a Theologian. If he knows anything, maybe he could help me. Madison had spent the worse better part of three weeks desperately trying to find any information on ancient cultures and mythologies. Madison’s mid-term, as part of her comparative religions class, was to identify and cite the presence of ancient cultures and their practices (including Mythos) in modern day society. She’d been hopelessly digging for any pre-Christian information, possibly even before Celtic and Mayan times. Her report was due this Monday and so far: squat. Madison shot a glance back at Sterling, who had taken up position half way down the bar. He plucked his pipe from his mouth and folded his arms, the smile never fading. Madison quietly growled at him, making sure that she never forgot this moment and that he’d pay dearly for it. She mustered enough courage to speak her mind but the man turned on her quickly. She backed up in her chair as the man stood up, his eyes aglow in the hearth’s firelight. His eyes were a green she’d never seen before. They seemed to drill right through
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her. She was powerless to turn away. She lost sight of Sterling, the bar, and the entire pub. Just the man…and his eyes. “Who-” Madison’s brain strained at the concepts of English language and syntax. “I am older than time. I am the stars that shine and the colors of the rising sun. I am the wind in the trees and the silence over a lake. I am all that makes it possible to imagine.” The man loomed over her, a power so intense it could fuel the universe. Madison sat, locked in awe, overcome by fear. “I am the tale. I am the fable. I am creation.” Madison rabbitted from her seat, terror pumping through her veins as she crashed into the Flagon’s front door. She never noticed the freezing air as she ran into the street, nor did she notice the truck, full from the brewery, plowing along, too fast to stop. (We have waited and she has arrived. Be gentle to this creature, she is young in knowledge and innocence fills her heart. Speak with kind words. She is our last hope. Quiet and away spirits, she awakens . . .) Madison blinked slowly, unsure of where the light source was coming from. She felt marble beneath her, smooth and warm to the touch. Her body ached, not from injury, but as if she’d slept for a week. Her muscles strained as she sat up, a hand to her head, trying to steady her pounding brain. Must’ve drank more than I thought. Gotta’ tell Sterling to cut
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back. Must’ve— Her mind snapped back to its last memory. The man. Green eyes. He said— Her reflexes launched her backward and up, her body forgetting pain with the rush of adrenaline. Her eyes swept up and down her own body to make sure all was still intact as she last saw it. She held her hands up before her face. OK. Sure. No problem. I’m alive and I’m still— Madison’s sight slid past her hands. The hallway stretched forever, a bright light diffusing the other end. The smooth, seamless marble floor wove its way from gray to purest white to the deepest black and back to gray. Pedestals, of marble as well, stood side by side on either wall stretching as long as the hall itself. The pedestals stood four feet in height, white in color, but no two looked alike. Some Grecian, some Roman, others a variety of styles and designs. One imitated a mighty oak, its trunk wrapped with ivy. Another was Egyptian in make with cartouches and hieroglyphics scrawled about. The pedestals’ beauty and design were only outmatched by what perched on top. My God. (If you insist.) Figures, standing about two feet in height, were posed upon the pedestals, in a variety of postures. A woman, carved of luminous moonstone and wrapped in a cloak of stars, stood looking down at the world beneath her feet. Opposite from her, a man-cat stood,
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carved from tiger’s eye. He was hunched over a stream, dipping his hand, preparing to sip its cool water. Beside him was a man, whittled from wood, walking amongst a beautiful field of wild flowers. His face had a slight sorrowful look. Such a beautiful place and yet he’s sad. Madison took a step closer to the statue, amazed by the intricate detail. She looked at a weeping willow which stood behind the man. The branches hung impossibly thin. I’ve seen some carvings in my day but that’s impossible. My grandfather wouldn’t even be able to construct that. Her gaze drifted back to the wooden man. He was smiling at her. Madison leaped back, throwing her head around at the other statues. Directly behind her, an onyx carving of a small raven sat perched on the shoulder of a man leaning against a tree. He held a push broom in one hand and a cigar in another. He had a pumpkin for a head. What the hell is going on? “Which hell were/are you looking for? We have many.” Madison spun around wildly, her eyes starting to well with tears. Get a grip girl. You’re just having a bad—a really bad dream. “You were/are beyond the Dreaming my dear.” Her racing heartbeat was gone. Her heavy breathing… gone. All semblances of thought, space, and time were lost. She stared, eyes locked, mouth snapped shut. Alive or dead, she did not know. A few yards before her it stood. The Figure—draped in a cloak
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of shadow—cast illuminations from its many folds and openings. An oversized cowl, like those worn by villains in a Victorian horror story, obscured its face. The Ghost of Christmas Future. There seemed to be no hands visible nor feet to move. It just stood before her. Its dark brilliance shining across the floor and walls. The light at the end of the hall cast an almost godlike, omnipotent aura in an eerie silhouette. “Do not be afraid my child. We shall not harm you.” Whaohmygawdonknowhatuhdo “Relax and do not take fear into your heart. Be strong and meet us on hallowed ground.” Madison slumped to the side, the wood man’s pedestal holding her up. Her eyes regained movement and again drifted down to the wooden man in the glen. The carving was now kneeling before a little girl, embracing her warmly. The girl’s head was turned slightly and Madison could make out the tiniest details: her eyes, her hair, her freckles in the sunlight. It’s me. My God it’s me. I remember him. I was lost in the woods and he found me and helped me home. I never saw him again. “You forgot.” Madison turned back to the cloaked Figure. She couldn’t determine its sex; it seemed to have many voices speaking as one, like a precision chorus. A man’s strength, a woman’s wisdom, a child’s innocence; all were there and more, a thousand voices echoing in the hall. “I-I didn’t know who . . . I mean, who was he?”
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The Figure moved, gliding effortlessly above the marble, over to her and the wood man. It stopped a few feet short, sensing her fear and confusion. “You were/are six. You are/had been chasing sounds in the woods out behind your home. You had/have become lost.” “Why are you—” “You were/are starting to cry. A man with branches about his body and flowers in his hair had/has found you. He wipes/wiped your tears and takes/took your hand, leading you back to your house.” “—talking in the past tense—” “You see/saw your mother and father standing on the deck, calling your name. They are/were scared, now they were/are happy.” “—as well as the present?” “You look/looked back and he is/was gone.” The Figure moves a fold of cloth and waives it at the pedestal. The man and the child fade to nothing. “You grew up and forgot the man and the myth.” Madison lurched at the pedestal, hoping to stop its disappearance. She righted herself, eyes darting at the presence with frustration. “Where did it go? What’d you do with it?” The Figure folded its appendage back into its body. “We did not make it fade away. You did.” Madison’s, face a blend of confusion and fear. “I don’t understand.” “We do. You are/were a small girl.” Madison sighed heavily, eyeing the empty space that held her savior. “Why do you speak like that?”
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“We will explain. Please follow us.” The Figure turned and floated down the hall past the pedestals and the figures they bore. Madison’s curiosity baited her forward. She wondered about this Figure and whether or not this whole thing was not some liquorinduced delusional state. What looked to be arms raised up from the Figure’s sides, lifting its light on the pedestals and their inhabitants. “We must remind you, we are beyond reality and illusion. We are far more complex, so much simpler than what you are accustomed to. We have no sense of time—that is a mortal commodity. We are here. We are bound by the forgetfulness through time by human’s memory. We are ageless, lest we be forgotten.” Madison lost her mind to the Figure’s words and her imagination to the men, women, and all other manner of creatures laid out on display for her to see. The Creature in the closet, the woman locked away in the high tower, complete with Dragon and white knight; the sensation of being an Eagle in flight. The innermost circles of her subconscious sprung forward, opening all the locked doors that the banality of reality can close forever. The Figure stopped and turned to face Madison. Her psyche snapped back into place, her full attention returned. “Can you feel it?” “Feel what? I feel so much that I’ve never encountered before.” “That is The Gleaning.” Madison rolled the word around on her tongue, tasting its prom-
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ise. “What is The Gleaning?” The Figure’s cloak started to stir. A wind, very slight at first, licked at the tips of Madison’s hair. The wind continued to build, her clothes whipping about. From under the folds of night and day, came a brilliance not unlike the very sun itself. Pure white light filled the Hallway, obliterating any shadow which hid within the cracks and crevices in every statue and pedestal. Nothing was left to hide from the intense illumination. Madison shielded her eyes when it became too bright. Wincing in pain, the light penetrated her eyelids. She felt it was going to light up her soul. “Open your eyes and witness The Gleaning.” The fear grew within her. She slowly—ever so slowly—opened her eyes. The cloak, the folds of darkness were gone. Before her was pure, simple, beautiful light. Hidden deep within the light was a form, an essence of a form, swimming in a sea of energy. This is not a Ghost. The focus of the light seemed to emanate from the center, deep inside where the heart and soul dwells, and further beyond still. Madison stood in reverie, frozen with something new, something beautiful. She felt inside herself, skins of the past melting away to reveal her inner core, her deepest feelings, emotions, and memories. “You may call us the Gleaning. We are the embodiment of the inside, the underneath, the up above. The Gleaning is a power unlike anything else. It is the wonder a small child possesses. It is the wisdom of a Medicine Woman, the power of a thousand men. We are
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the answers. We are a hundred questions. You have the desire within you to seek, to learn, to know all there is within you and the hearts of all you see. “To Glean is to see the truth, the wonder of life and all it offers. So much of what was forgotten was by those who lost the gift to Glean: the ability to find the tales that lay under every truth, to find the myth behind every man. You are a vital link to our existence, an anchor connecting the dream to reality. We call you kin, for you are a part of us, as we are a part of you. “Once upon a time, all were like you. They had dreams and a love of imagination. Then the monster Banality appeared and took their dreams, one by one, until there were no more. The special ones, like you, were able to bury it deep within themselves. The stories you knew, the fables and myths mothers would tell their children…they have been forgotten. “But not destroyed.” “A dream can not be killed. A story cannot be truly erased.” The Figure lurking inside the light started to turn, around and around. “They are stored here, in the Forgotten Hall. These are all the dreams, myths, Gods and Goddess that have been forgotten and ignored across the millennium. As time progresses, as technology and reality settle in across the planet, the wonderment of imagination and creation become lost, flotsam in Banality’s wake. They come here, to this station of waiting.
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“The Hall was small at first, a few tales and legends that explained simple things. As time progressed with man’s scientific mind, the Hall became larger and longer, accommodating those that were left behind, shoved out of the mind. Now they wait, hopeful yet weary, that someone may remember them. All they want is to be remembered, to be given life by the curiosity and wonder of a person’s imagination. They thrive off of the creativity of one’s soul. They want to live in the mind, to walk the dreams of men and women. To fill the hole that is slowly eroding the subconscious of the world. “You can fill that hole for us. You have the ability to search and dig, to retrieve the tales of old, the myths that made the stars shine and the sun rise. In books, songs, poems and writings of old and new. Search the headlines, the stories are there. They just need to be seen, to be Gleaned.” The Figure’s spinning grew faster and faster, until once again it was too bright to see. Madison’s heart jumped as she started to feel herself slide into unconsciousness. She reached out with blind hands, hoping to grab onto anything that would keep her there. She knew she would have to return to the waking world; her place was not in the Hall, dwelling amongst memories of old. I have so many questions. I don’t know where to start or how to Glean or how to release you all from the Hall . . . and how . . . to . . . return . . .
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“Jesus and Mary Joseph! Donna’ do tha’ to me again! Ye better open yer eyes or I’ll have ta’ dump another pint on ya and lemme’ tell ya, it ain’t cheap ya’ know! It’s me best port!” She felt a light upon her but it was small and cold. Her back started to chill, the dampness of cold pavement mixed with the light rain. Slowly her eyes opened. “Where am I?” “Where are yeh?! Ya’ cracked yer noggin’? Ye’re in front of me pub, tryin’ to get yerself into an early grave by parkin’ yer butt under a truck. You daft bat.” Madison focused her eyes on the source of the light. A street lamp loomed over, dimly lighting her fallen form. Above her sat the squat face of a small Irishman, smiling with a pipe dangling from his lips. She felt his hands under her, lifting her up to a sitting position. Her body was in a state of pain unlike any she’d ever known. She looked down upon herself, her clothes dirty and wet. Scrapes, filled with dirt and oil, streaked her arms and legs, her clothes beyond repair. She turned her attention to Sterling, who was now seated beside her, playing with his pipe. “I want to go back.” Sterling looked at her as if a truck had sideswiped her. “Go? Where? Under the truck?” Madison’s sight stepped past Sterling, down the street and across the intersection. There, under another streetlight as if written in a
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tale, he stood. The leather jacket, the hair slicked back with strands falling into his piercing green eyes. He stared at her fiercely, trying to articulate without speaking. “It’s him,” she squeaked. “I dinna hear ye.” Sterling looked out at to where the man stood. The man simply nodded his head at Madison and turned away. As he stepped out of the light, a cloak of shadow wrapped around him and swallowed him up, devoured in the midnight light. I promise you. All of you. I will not forget again. I will make others remember, to make them live the dream. “C’mon Petal, up ye go.” Sterling helped Madison off the cold ground and together they made their way back into Flagon. There he would put her by the fire and warm her up, hoping to glean what afflicted her.
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The Path to Redemption is a Mobius Strip Greg Elperin
Your thoughts are on a bridge upon a river Where we would smoke and gaze down at the docks You want to jump And crash And keep on going If only you could solve the paradox Instead you grip the car keys with tense fingers While wondering how far you’ll get by dawn You’ve left behind old photos and mementos Atop a scribbled list of pros and cons You asked me what I thought of second chances While packing up your past life in a van As usual, I shrugged and changed the subject And wished I had an answer worth a damn
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I’d be the first to tell you you’re a coward A real man would have stayed and found a way For what it’s worth you know I’m only human For what it’s worth I’d never be that brave
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Traveling Old Jerusalem Greg Elperin
Rice, lamb, sweat, and tobacco Less an aroma, more a climate Sun-baked deep into sand-colored stone Where stray cats meander and laze And children scamper barefoot or in sandals Peddling photographs, cigarettes, keepsakes Before disappearing back into a labyrinth of alleyways Converging and diverging randomly like a lovers’ quarrel While teenage girls wade past the crowds In matching dusty-tan uniforms Lugging heavy backpacks And machine guns slung like purses over the shoulder Hands stained maroon with pomegranate juice Discussing which movie to see when their shift ends Under prices shouted in Arabic Haggled back in English Tour groups bickering in Russian “Don’t touch that, child. It could be a bomb” Whispered scoldingly in Hebrew
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If
Elizabeth Emerick If I believed in ghosts, I could close my eyes and will you into solid form Instead of the occasional disembodied voice on the other end More than the apparition that walks and talks and makes love and is gone with no plans to reappear I could imagine warmth and pressure, the air stirring from your words As if the island of my chenille-tufted bed is a mirage that shimmers in the Heat of these early summer days. #eFiction
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Contributors Aaron M. Wilson lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He earned his M.F.A in Writing from Hamline University. His collection of linked short stories, The Many Lives of Inez Wick, was published in March 2011. His fiction has appeared in several journals and anthologies including eFiction Magazine, Eclectic Flash (and Eclectic Flash: The Best of 2010), Twin Cities: Cifiscape Vol. I, and The Last Man Anthology He also writes about books, stories, movies, and his experiences as an adjunct instructor of English, Literature, and Environmental Science on his blog: Soulless Machine. Will Pearson is currently a third year university student studying the history of medicine. This is the first somewhat-decently edited and revised piece of fiction to be produced, and the hope is that more will shortly follow. Following in the wake of authors such as Dean Koontz, Carl Hiaasen, Bill Fitzhugh, and many more, the author plans to create a world of great humor and intrigue. Harris Tobias was raised by robots disguised as New Yorkers. Despite an awkward childhood he learned to read and write. To date Mr. Tobias has published two detective novels, The Greer Agency and A Felony of Birds, to critical acclaim. In addition he has published
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short stories in Down in the Dirt Magazine, Literal Translations, Electric Flash and Ray Gun Revival. He currently lives and writes in Charlottesville, Virginia. Kathleen Troutman has been writing all her life. She spent 25 years as a graphic designer/copywriter and is now working on writing projects in earnest. Her writing blog offers samples of my work: http://katiewritesagain.wordpress.com/ Stasey Norstrom is a 2010 graduate of Oregon State University focused on creative and technical writing. He is married with two wonderful kids and a seven year-old puppy. This is his third publication, behind ”The Dreaming” and ”The Golden Age”. You can follow him at http://www.daedaluspress.wordpress.com
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Timeline Glen Binger Episode II Behind me, looming in the darkness of the dining room, the man with the metrosexual haircut challenges me. He is here to create a presence – a situational understanding. A rapport. I can feel it growing in the refrigerated goose bumps on my arm. I turn to face him. “The timeline is very sensitive, Mr. Carlucci,” His voice is cold and echoes confidence off my kitchen tiles. “We can’t have you digging around, messing things up.” There is a delay between the movement of his mouth and the sound of his words – almost as if he were being broadcast. “Who are you?” I chuckle. “And why are you in my house?” “Ah, the details of our arranged appointment are not important. What is important is the information you’re going to share with me during said scheduled meeting. I have no time for this.” I should be careful. I hate to admit it, but he intimidates me. My manhood is being tested. And more importantly, my kin. Marcus was right. After work one night, I came home to find Marcus sitting on the floor of his bedroom in a pile of empty coffee cups. He was having #eFiction
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trouble navigating the mouse pad of his computer due to jitters. “What’re you doing?” I asked. His eyes darted back and forth. No response. “Marc?” “Huh? What? Oh hey. What’s up?” He kept focused on the screen. “Nothing. Just got out of work,” I said. “What are you doing?” “Yeah. Great. Work sucks. Me? Figuring out extra precautions.” His thumb slapped the space bar a few times, then he started typing. “Extra precautions? What do you mean? Like safety precautions?” “Yeah. Sort of.” “Dude. Are you alright? What’s with all the coffee?” It seemed as if he wasn’t even breathing – rather just absorbing oxygen through his flesh to save time. His eyes dashed again. “Huh? What? Oh. Nothing. This just needs to get finished. Running out of time.” I stepped over several cups to glance at his screen. He was looking at handguns. But when he realized I was reading over his shoulder, he clicked off to another open screen – one with instructions how to remove the serial numbers from fire arms. “What the hell are you looking at?” I asked him. “Guns. We need guns.” He looked back at me. “We’re going to need tools.” Up in my present-day kitchen, I decide against trusting this man.
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“What’s there to tell you?” I ask. He chuckles. “Hm. It seems I’ve underestimated your intelligence.” His smile leaks ego. “All I wish to do is talk, listen, hear what you have to say. I know what you’re doing and I know why.” He takes a step towards me and I flinch, showing him the weakness I’d been mentally breaking down. “Relax,” he says. “If I was here to kill you, I’d have done so by now.” He flashes a holster looped to his belt encasing a 9mm, of which, thanks to Marcus, I notice is cleaner than ours was when it was new. Why would anyone want me dead? This whole situation has gone from bad to shit in a real short matter of time. My toes feel sweaty. “Well that’s comforting,” I say, “but I still don’t know what you’re talking about.” What did we step into? He shakes his head, stale with dauntless posture. “Okay.” He sips a breath and reaches into his coat pocket to hand me a business card. “If you change your mind, give me a call.” He shoulders me, heading for the front door as if he had already planned making the motion. “Oh. And if I were you, I’d update my security systems.” He tosses me the key my parents hide beneath the back door’s Welcome mat and leaves. I look down at the card. Robert Weston, Timeline Agent. Bureau of Time Investigation. “B.T.I.,” I chuckle to myself. “Sounds like an STD.”
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In the basement, Marcus popped in on me bolting the seats down in place on the original prototype. This was a few weeks before his disappearance. Back when things were normal and we were just two idiots enjoying each other’s company. “Hey man,” he said, startling me from the stairs. “Sorry about this morning. Caffeine and frustration is a bad combo.” “No worries,” I said, tightening a bolt, nodding to the mini-fridge. “Want a beer?” “Sure.” “So what were you looking up before?” He opened a can, took a sip, and sighed. “Well, it’s come to my attention that we’re fucked.” I laughed. “What do you mean?” “Because of what we’re doing, what we’re trying to build, we’ve attracted the attention of some people. Dangerous people. People we lock doors and avoid eye contact around.” “Like who? Mad scientists with needles and scalpels and those creepy reflector-head-band-things?” “No more like the authorities.” Marcus took another sip. “And the corrupt.” I pulled my head out of the machine to face him. “So the FBI? CIA? What?” “No. More like people who either want to legally fuck us and steal our idea. People who wouldn’t think twice about popping our
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skulls beneath a tire.” He pointed his index finger at his temple and cocked his thumb then laughed, “Either way we’re screwed.” I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or soil myself. So instead I blurted, “Well – life would suck if someone didn’t wanna screw ya!” I made a jacking-off motion. Marcus laughed and sipped his beer. The second Weston clicks the door shut, I run to Marcus’s room, thinking of Holley – which then, of course, leads me to remembering the last time we had sex was over a month ago. Now there’s some patching I need to do – but it’ll have to wait. Project Find Marcus is time consuming. I’m wrist-deep into Marcus’ closet digging for the stash of weapons, thinking that I should probably relocate them so mom and dad don’t go snooping around and accidentally find them while on a round of nostalgia-go-seek. I can deal with that later, though. I’ve got to get to Holley’s apartment. Whoever’s hunting me is surely on their way to slinking into the lives of everyone I know – jeopardizing everything I have. Weston’s card paints itself on the back of my eyelids. Sweatshirts, blankets, shoeboxes full of pictures, some instrument cables, and his Julie box – I pile them all outside the door frame, revealing the small, navy duffel bag. I wonder what she’s doing nowadays - Julie, I mean. I haven’t heard from her since they broke up after their first semester of college. I don’t know what the hell she was doing with Marcus but I liked her; always fun to hang out with and always
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able to make you laugh. My father’s rusty muffler rattles up the driveway and putters to silence. Shit. I grab the duffle bag, run into my room, toss it on my bed, and run back to the other room; back to the mess. I hear the car door shut and figure I have about thirty seconds to throw the pile back into the closet. But then there it is. The blue skull again. The same one that was on the dumpster and the baking soda. Staring at me – mocking me as if to say “I’m here, Sal, and I’m two steps ahead of you, just like always.” It’s on the side of the Julie box. Marcus, are you messing with me? Deep down inside of my gut a small gnawing curiosity grows to my fingers. My father opens the front door. “Sal,” he says, “You home?” “Yeah,” I say. “In Marc’s room.” I open the box and there, staring me in the face, is the key to the machine nestled on top of some ratty, old concert t-shirt. The one and only key we made to the prototype is laughing in my face; its teeth glittery and stimulating. “Hey,” my dad says, popping his head through the doorway. “What are you doing in here?”
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Book Reviews Hungry for You - A.M. Harte Zombies. Brain eating Zombies. Well, not all of these zombies are brain eaters. Some are down-right thoughtful and compassionate. Sound strange? Well, it is. Strange in a good way. A.M. Harte does an excellent job bringing the zombie world to life, that is if zombies can be considered alive. She gives the reader just enough details to want more and force them into reading another tale before bed. There are stories of zombies that feed from human meat, sex, and even some who feed off of animal products so they don’t have to kill humans. This is a collection of short stories is filled with horrifying tales and love stories, sometimes mixed into one truly disturbing tale. One of which is that of a man who doesn’t want his wife to know that she is quickly dying and becoming a zombie, but also doesn’t want the zombie horde to kill her before her transformation is complete. The story that inspired the title of the book, “Hungry for You”, was my personal favorite. In this alternate reality, zombies are ‘legalized’ and some people allow zombies to feed off of them through sex. Without feeding, of course, a zombie will begin to decay more rapidly and die. To protect the zombie population, laws have been put into place simply because ‘zoobs’ lack any brain function to defend them#eFiction
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selves, or even open doors so they are able to find food. Police officer Retta is a zombie sympathizer who is guilt ridden after her sister and boyfriend became zombies and eventually meet their final death. While on patrol with her unsympathetic partner, Officer Retta sees some suspicious signs and enters a building to find a zombie who has been assaulted and tied to a bed. Retta decides to bring the zombie into the station and try to question him about what happened inside that old building. Eventually, Retta decides that the zombie needs to feed before they can continue their questioning. The problem arises when he refuses to feed off of any of the willing donors, something that has never been observed before. It turns out that this zoob has eyes for only one person, and is willing to die for, or because, of her. How far would you go to save someone? What would your guilt drive you to do if it meant saving one life? Would you even consider zombies alive? These are the questions I found myself asking as I thought, she needs to save him, and, how romantic, he loves her. Then I got to the thought of, eww, he’s a zombie, he isn’t even alive. I quickly reminded myself that zombies are, as of right now, only fiction, and I wouldn’t be faced with any of these hard decisions any time soon. This is a great book of zombie tales to read in short bursts, or all at once if zombies are your thing. I have to admit, I’m looking forward to my next A.M. Harte read.
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Vampire General: Intern with the Vampire by Kit Iwasaki Another vampire novel? Yep, another one. Vampire novels seem to have taken over the bookstore and ebookstore shelves. Try telling someone that you are reading a fantasy novel about vampires. You may be shocked by their reaction, or you may be that person, the one looking down on me for reading “yet another vampire novel”. Well, here are the ins and outs of this particular debut novel by Kit Iwasaki. Vampire General opens with a steamy scene in which Aline, resident doctor and human being, is in a supply closet with her boyfriend, also a resident and human being. The cliched scene is quickly interrupted by pagers sounding, alerting Aline and Tim to an incoming emergency. As they rush to the Emergency Room, Tim gets a critical patient who eventually codes while Aline gets stuck with a patient who is capable of walking himself in. Aline’s patient, Dr. Rocque, is insistent that he be able to see his patient, Clive. Clive is, of course, Tim’s patient. Aline is reluctant to grant Rocque’s request, but eventually gives in to his charm. In her attempt to help Rocque, Aline succeeds in stopping Clive’s heart while Tim and another doctor watch. After the stunt of killing a patient, Aline is dismissed by this hospital, and Tim, for good. Depressed, Aline heads home only to become more depressed with the lack of comfort food available in her apartment. Her self
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wallowing is cut short by Rocque knocking on her door in the middle of the night. Aline finds herself following Rocque to a hospital unknown to her in a questionable part of town. Before entering the hospital, Rocque has one condition that Aline must abide by: she must keep her mouth shut. When Aline walks through the doors of the hospital, she is horror struck. She steps off of the street and into a world that she never imagined could exist. There were things in this hospital that didn’t exist in Aline’s worst nightmares. She not only has to treat patients that could harm or kill her, she has to work with those who are far scarier. From vampires to mermaids, Aline finds herself fighting for her patients’ lives, fighting for her right to treat her patients, and could find herself fighting for her own life if anyone were to find out that she is human and not the vampire that Rocque has claimed that she is. Vampire General is a new twist on Vampire culture that I haven’t seen in the past. I’ve seen variations of vampires as doctors with human patients or supernatural patients, but this was a first for me. What makes this twist so desirable to the reader is that the doctor herself has no idea what she is walking into and has her assumptions of the entire world thrown out the window all in the course of a few moments. This novel seemed to read like a single episode of a television drama. I often find myself wishing that my favorite television show
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was a novel instead of an hour long show. Books are far better at expanding on ideas and scenes and one episode would be plenty of material for a well written book. The book followed a simple story line of a girl who lost her job, got a new one, and had to overcome problems in the her new workplace. Granted, her workplace problems were far greater than her coworkers not liking her or a treacherous commute. The story, however, lacked a subplot. Yes, there was lust and sexual tension, but it never went anywhere. There was no scandal, no deceit. Aline was able to keep herself in check despite the impossible pull of vampire pheromones. I found it odd that the author never discussed vampire diets. Aline, who is pretending to be a vampire, sits down the the hospital cafeteria, orders a salad and proceeds to eat it without anyone questioning her. I know vampires live only in the fantasy world, but I found it odd to think of a vampire, even someone pretending to be a vampire, eating a salad. I found it even weirder that no one in the book questioned her “diet”. It seems like a loose end that the author could easily clear up for the reader. As a reader, I found myself wanting to yell at the book, “Okay, I get it already!” The author had the ability to give a great description and lead the reader to a conclusion, but then also spelled out what the reader had already understood. An example of this is the last sentence of a character description. The book reads, ‘On his left hand was a thick, heavy golden ring; Kessler was married.’ The point of the ring
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description is to show that Kessler is married. I have to admit, the cliff hanger ending has me awaiting the publication of future Vampire General novels. I have confirmed with the publisher, and author, that there will be more in this series coming out soon. Aline was a likeable character, and I see her becoming stronger and holding her own at Grace General Hospital, even after the transhumans discover that she isn’t one of them. My biggest question is, when does she become a vampire?
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Available on Amazon Kindle and everywhere books are sold. #eFiction
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If you would like to subscribe to the magazine, please go to http://www.efictionmag.com/subscriptions Thank you for reading!
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