Smiling Cyrus by Lily Childs’

Hurtling. He’s hurtling. Cyrus has a head the size of three balloons welded into one, rubber bumps in all the right places. Someone set him up, something stung him.

Trinkets and engraved goblets topple from overloaded shelves as the boy, nearly a man runs the length of the room and back again. His eyes are peas in the growing face. He tears as them, not knowing if they are about to sink forever into the burgeoning flesh or pop and burst. Salty old seadog, those tears that spill; they sting the stretch marks spreading and ripping at the child’s visage.

Blind, Cyrus throws himself to the floor. Screaming is impossible; the fattened mouth is full to suffocation with a tongue of weeping meatloaf. Who would hear him anyway?

They start with a jingle, the bells; whispering at Cyrus with their teasing voices. He slaps at the spaces his ears used to be, hearing only mosquito torture and fearing another assault. So they play a little louder. The boy shudders as the noise grows in volume. Tinkling, ding dong dinging, tolling and tolling and tolling until the sound is too much and the eardrums inside Cyrus’s attic-sized head explode. The roar that almost kills him is enough to wake Mr and Mrs Cleavage in their bedroom below.

It’s the same every night since their son disappeared. They hear him scream, always at the witching hour of 3:15am. Charlie Cleavage had stopped his wife Debonair from exploring the loft; that was over a year ago. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t wonder – still.

***

“Charlie?”

“What is it hun? Hey, are my eggs ready yet?”

Debbie flips them once, then back again without spilling a drop of bile-shaded yolk. Charlie doesn’t care for his wife’s allergies, or that eggs make her gag every morning. Charlie has needs.

“I want… I mean – can we have a yard sale?”

She slips the eggs onto a plate next to a pile of grits and chunks of fried bread. It’s casual, how she hands her husband his breakfast but he knows she’s up to something. He grabs her wrist. Debonair has long since learned not to give Charlie the satisfaction of a flinch. She sits down, ignoring the pain and smiles with red lips.

“I saw something you’d like.”

Charlie releases his grip, attacks the eggs in a spattering mess.

“What?” is all he can manage with a full mouth.

“Now honey that would ruin the surprise. You know how I like to please you.”

She runs her skinny hand over his knee, hating every moment.

“This is special. But I need a lidda bit of money, and I thought we could – you know, clear out the back-room, the attic, the garage…”

Charlie drops his fork on the plate.

“The attic?”

Debbie smoothes her skirt over knees made of sticks. They shake beneath the floral-patterned cotton.

“Yup. The attic. I decided you were right. Cyrus isn’t coming back.”

Cyrus isn’t coming back. She’s practised the line until it no longer shakes in her mouth. Charlie eyes her, his thick brows bristling like April caterpillars ready to spin a cold cocoon. Ain’t no butterflies in that bastard, Debbie thinks.

“OK.”

He pats Debonair’s leg, lingering at her thigh. She swallows the hate and claps her hands.

“Oh, goodie! I’ll make a start while you’re at the mill today.”

She stands, escaping before he can spread his hand wide enough to hurt.

***

The back-room, Charlie’s den that never was a den is the easiest. She’s done it already. Cleared out the artisanal tables made of maple and deer horn; they’ll fetch a good price. As will her mother-in-law’s “loada fucking’ crap” watercolours.

The garage will be last; Debbie doesn’t understand cars so will leave anything mechanical untouched. She drifts outside to check her pitch at the front of the house before contemplating the loft-space. From the dormer above Cyrus stares down at his mother, not quite understanding why she hasn’t been to see him in so long. At his side, the Tooth Fairy wipes dribble from her plastic chin and rings her bell. Time to eat.

***

Cyrus’s old toys get their kicks in the usual ways, fathering soulless rejects by dolls with no holes, getting high from licks of raindrops that occasionally creep through the rafters. They shake, rattle and roll as Cyrus gets into position. Splayed out with everything on display Cyrus squeezes his eyes shut and lets his friends do their thing. He doesn’t mind so much anymore; it still hurts like shit but as they’ve explained – they are hungry, and if they feed they can stay alive to keep Cyrus company. It all makes sense. No. He doesn’t mind.

***

Debbie sings “Could It Be Magic?”. She’s allowed to sing when Charlie’s not at home. She does a little Donna Summer wiggle and belts out the lyrics as the sale starts to seem like an even better idea than she’d planned. Neatly labelled boxes vie for space beside transparent pink crates crammed with magazines and dog-eared paperbacks. Debbie’s song fades to a hum, trails away to silence. She gathers herself before making the ascent, before looking for Cyrus one last time.

The memory of that day kicks Debbie in the gut harder than a punch from her husband. She grabs the only chair not laden with goods and pulls herself onto it, parking her backside before her legs give way. She doesn’t cry. “Crying’s weak, bitch.” For once she is grateful for Charlie’s uninvited lesson because today she needs more strength than she has ever summoned before. She thinks of Cyrus’s freckled face; how his nose had a permanent pink stripe on the bridge from squinting at the sun. Debbie reaches out her hand to stroke the hair that isn’t there. Pale, almost peach strands of fine, fine locks – like hers used to be before Charlie declared he would never consider marrying a ‘non-blond’. She draws back to pat at her own head, fingering the stiff tresses murdered by peroxide.

When Cyrus hadn’t come home from school Debbie instantly believed him dead; abducted by trailer-trash and dumped, lifeless somewhere in the forest – the very place Charlie spent his time killing trees for a living. Charlie hit her a good one for that outburst.

The cops did their bit, a few perfunctory searches and a poster campaign, but Debbie could see it their eyes – eyes that wouldn’t return her pleading stare – they knew Cyrus was dead too.

It had quickly transpired Cyrus had never even gone to school that day. He hadn’t got on the bus, didn’t turn up to meet his pals on the corner first. They assumed their friend was sick – that’s what they told the driver. The day’s relief teacher, being new to the role had accepted Cyrus Cleavage’s absence without contacting the parents. It turned out to be the last teaching job he’d ever have but that was no comfort to the Cleavages. Charlie had made sure the young man would never make a mistake like that again, and would likely never sire a child of his own. He thought Debbie didn’t know, but she knew a lot more than Charlie gave her credit for.

Once the pre-school disappearance became common knowledge suspicions did the rounds, coming squarely back to land on the Cleavages’ shoulders. Charlie’s temper was no secret and that stuck-up wife of his had to be complicit.

Debonair wipes a lonely, disobedient tear from her cheek.

“But we didn’t do it Cyrus, did we? Not even your Daddy with those filthy fists o’his. He never touched you.”

Upstairs, a glass breaks. Downstairs, Debbie gasps. She hears it, like she’s heard that scream every night. But this is louder still, and in broad daylight. She grabs the keys from the table, forcing her trembling legs to carry her into the hallway. If she could leap three steps at a time she would but dainty skips will have to do.

Another crash. From the very top of the house. Debbie’s heart is a throbbing casket, pounding in her ears, rushing blood through too-thin arteries.

“Mommy! It hurts. Help me.”

Debbie cannot open her mouth to call her son’s name but in her head she shouts in reply “I’m coming, I’m coming.”

She is at the top hallway. Muffled bell sounds tinkle through the ceiling, clashing with the jingle of keys in Debonair’s hands. She stares about, searching for the pole to pull the ladder down. It isn’t where she left it. Charlie must have moved it when he put the lock on the inner door to stop her going up there. She tries to calm herself though her nostrils flare and her chest palpitates. She’s seen it somewhere else over the last couple of days, hell she’s even seen it this morning.

“Think, woman,” she grinds her teeth as the noises above her rise in pitch.

The garage.

“Mommy…”

She wants to scream but tries to sound calm for Cyrus’s sake.

“I’ll be back in a sec honey. Wait. Don’t go anywhere.”

The comment doesn’t strike her as idiotic until she’s out the side door and standing on oil-stained concrete. Quickly scanning the room she spots the pull-pole hanging from Charlie’s neat tool board. The nail falls to the ground as Debbie yanks the pole down and heads back inside the house, leaving the garage door open. Charlie can beat her for that later; it won’t matter to her any more.

Her body speeds on adrenalin as she races back up the two flights of stairs.

“I’m here Cyrus! Mommy’s here.”

But now the world above her screams in overwhelming silence because Cyrus isn’t there. Even as Debbie drops the hatch and drags the ladder down she knows her son was never there. She ignores her own fear and mounts the steps regardless. Reaching the top she must crawl into the holding space to access the short door and is stalled by a moment of wonder that her hulk of a husband could have installed something so solid in such a cramped place.

It’s dark. She fumbles at the fob in her hand. Five keys of different sizes. She hadn’t asked Charlie which was the right one for the loft when he threw them at her but through trial and error is successful on the fourth attempt. Her fingers are sticky with sweat as she twists the lock and pushes the door open.

There is no broken glass. There are no bells chiming. Cyrus isn’t sitting cross-legged on the dusty floor waiting for his mom because Cyrus is hanging from the ceiling by his hair. He is dressed in a life-size teddy outfit sewn from smaller bears, ripped apart and rejoined. Blood drips from every clumsy stitch, wrought with the same thread that has sealed Cyrus’s mouth into a permanent smile.

Debonair Cleavage drops to her knees. She doesn’t flinch as the door clicks shut behind her though the sound drowns out her ears. Sunlight blares through the dormer window to create a halo around her swinging son.

“Cyrus, where have you been?”

It’s all she can manage to say.

To her sides, feet scuttle behind piles of ephemera. Clonking great wooden shoes and soft rubber pumps trip towards Debonair who is staring at her son’s face, his own eyes huge with warning. A migraine of sparks whirl in the periphery closing in on the desperate mother. She twists abruptly.

“What the…?”

They dance, not slowly but with violent lurches and spins as though reeling from coiled springs wound to the limit. The procession of toylife rushes at Debonair, teeth gnashing, ready to bite. Those with hands clasp the strangest of weapons – toenail scissors, broken electricals with buzzing exposed wires… Cyrus convulses. The golden locks tear from his scalp as he writhes. Debbie crawls towards him, raises her arms up to grab at his feet – all too late. The dolls attack Debonair from all directions and even as Cyrus’s body slumps to the ground beside her – so close, so close – he can see them feeding already. He loses consciousness as tiny fingers dip into the pouring lacerations in his skull.

***

Dusk falls and the Mill Bar has closed for the week, sending workers away until the Monday shift. Charlie guzzles the last of his personal supply and remarks on the state of the lawn as he pulls into the Cleavage driveway. Two trestle tables have fallen over in the wind; the old curtains his wife has used to cover them are strewn on the grass. Has she sold everything? Reluctantly impressed, Charlie starts to wonder what treat Debonair will be buying him with the proceeds. His pleasure is short-lived; he can clearly see light glaring into the garage as its door slowly peels backward. She’s left the inner-door wide open – how many times has he told her? Trust her to ruin everything. He storms into the house, his hand already raised for the slap.

“Debonair?”

She’s up in the attic; he can hear her dragging stuff about.

“Get your sorry ass down here and tell me what the hell’s going on.” Patience isn’t one of Charlie’s few virtues; when his wife fails to respond he bounds up the stairs two at a time.

“Debonaire! Dammit woman, you answer me when I’m talkin’ at ya.”

The thud from above is enough to stop Charlie in his tracks for all of a second. He rushes the remaining stairs toward the first floor landing and is up on the top level in moments. The step-ladder is still hanging from the loft. Charlie squeezes his bulk onto it and climbs, frowning at the whispering noises that twitter in the space beyond the hatch. If she’s stolen his radio she’s gonna pay. He hammers on the solid construction – a fine piece of work – and twists the key that his wife has left in the lock.

“I’m comin’ in Debonair. You’d better be…”

Charlie’s words are ripped from his mouth, along with the end of his tongue. Shrill laughter pierces his eardrum as the knife glints – it is snatched away by unseen hands and his mouth fills with hot blood. Choking, he spits on the floor. The flow won’t stop. He reaches for the light-pull but even as he tugs it stinging arrows fly at him from the corner of the room. Squinting with pain he spies the bow from his son’s old archery set waving about, but not who is firing at him. His legs give way and he has no time to feel shame. He lands hard on his butt, his fat cheeks crashing into a pile-up of metal automobiles – Cyrus’s collection of all things with wheels. Charlie had taken them from the boy the day he went missing, angry with the lad for answering him back. Now they are crushed. Grief hits Charlie unexpectedly; his son would never be able to play with them again. Even if he were still alive, the vehicles were probably broken beyond repair, all because of me. Charlie slams a fist into the hardwood floor. The shock resonates through his core, sparking his senses back to life.

“Who’th here?” he lisps, splattering rusted spittle down his plaid shirt. The only sound is his heart drumming in his ears. Outside the wind is rising; it howls though the rafters. The sky blackens with purple storm clouds that rage black against the dormer window. Charlie doesn’t see them because of the two life-size puppets that drop from the beam to obscure his view and stop his breath. They dance. Strings rise and fall to move the limbs, they flip and flap in broken symmetry. The bile in Charlie’s gut surges upward to burn his throat as he recognises the outlines of his wife and son. Behind him, a dull click as the string-pull is grabbed and the bodies are flooded with light.

“Jesus fuckin’ hell.”

Charlie pisses his pants at the scene before his eyes. The corpses of the only family he has left in the world are bloated and pulsing, the skin rippling. How can Cyrus be here? How long has he been here? The realisation that his son must have been alive all this time and living in the goddamn house – the god-damned house – hits Charlie with such force the angry, violent heart that’s been swelling and beating at an impossible rate finally breaks. He roars in agony, clutching at his left-arm – its flesh already torn from the arrow attack – and collapses. As Charlie Cleavage’s chest spasms the last sound he hears is that of bells; his last vision is his wife and son’s mouths dropping open and dolls and toys of all makes and sizes crawling out to drop to the ground. The man that didn’t kill his son but beat his wife dies at their feet as they empty out before him.

***

They have done with this family, these creatures made by human hands. They have fed – gorged themselves on Cleavage blood until the hosts became their playthings. They leave the crusts behind – paper-thin of skin and void of organs – and beat a strange retreat into the woods behind the house.

Tooth Fairy has collected her dues. She drags molars and incisors in a brown leather bag; they clink against each other, jingling in discord. As she closes the Cleavage back door she coughs a spark into the kitchen. It catches Debonair’s red and white chequered table-cloth, the cotton flares, flames rising to lick at papers and cardboard boxes. They burn fast. With no-one to dampen the fire’s enthusiasm it pulls the rafters into its maw.

No-one will care. The boy – long-gone – has already been grieved for. Not a single person will shed a tear for Charlie Cleavage. And Debonair – Debonair was already a shell – she left years ago.

***

If you go down to the woods today… beware the tiny bells. Sometimes they chime. And sometimes they bite.

Bio:  Lily Childs… writes dark fiction, horror and chilling mysteries. She is currently completing her first novel, a supernatural asylum thriller set in the south of England. Her twisted fairytale, In Search of Silver Boughs will be published by KnightWatch Press in their subscriber chapbook series in 2016.

Lily’s work has appeared in many anthologies and collections; she has also published stand-alone short stories such as the recent Within Wet Walls and The House of Three (Ganglion Press). In 2015, Lily’s B-Movie tale Bite of the Horrorcane burst forth from KnightWatch Press’s Killer Bees from Outer Space and Jimson Jane seethed its way into The Grimorium Verum from Western Legends Publishing. She has also been published by James Ward Kirk Fiction and Soul Bay Press.

Cabaret of Dread: a Horror Compendium (2012) is a gathering of Lily’s terrifying tales. It includes her psychological crime thriller Carpaccio, nominated for a Spinetingler Award in 2011 and Smiling Cyrus, which is re-published here on TK’n’C. She is a member of The British Fantasy Society, former Horror Editor at Thrillers Killers ‘n’ Chillers e-zine and owner/editor/publisher of Ganglion Press.

Lily’s books on Amazon

Blog:  The Feardom

Twitter @LilyChilds and Facebook.com/LilyChildsFeardom

The Writing on the Wall by Col Bury…

Sarah Brinkley was too timid for the Job and soon realised it wasn’t for her.  To be honest, deep down she had known all along.  She’d learned quickly that working Moss Side and Longsight certainly wasn’t for the faint-hearted.  Anyway, they’d frozen her pay, and upped the retirement age and her pension contributions, so there wasn’t much point in sticking around as she’d probably never get to see it.  And she certainly wouldn’t miss the goddamn paperwork, that’s for sure.

Mike was really understanding about her decision to quit the cops, and secretly relieved, she’d sensed.  He always used to back her up, even at the simplest of jobs, saying, those were the ones that could catch you out, when your guard was down.  The response sarge soon twigged and, due to lack of resources, Mike got a bollocking for unnecessarily tying himself up at her jobs.  Despite this, he’d still turn up to ensure she was safe, bless him.  Anyway, even though being a Bobby hadn’t suited her, at least she’d found her soul mate by joining up.

“You moving in this place then?”  The elderly woman, carrying a bag of groceries, didn’t make eye contact.

“Yes… yes we are… we have.”  Sarah couldn’t disguise the pride in her voice, at her and Mike having finally found their dream home, away from the noise, pollution and ‘fuckwittery of the city’, as Mike so eloquently put it.  Now they were beyond the outskirts of Manchester, just into Derbyshire.  “Do you live through the woods? I saw a little cottage earlier.”

“Sure. On my own now. It’s lonely out here… alone.”  Her voice was crackly, like sticks breaking underfoot.

Still no eye contact. Strange.  “Oh, Mike and I will pop over to see you. He could cook you a meal. Was a head chef in The Trafford Centre before he joined the police. He’s lovely is my Mike. Funny too, he’ll soon cheer you up.”

“We’ll see.”  She craned her neck upward at charcoal clouds.  “Best get going. It’s a different place at night, you know.”  She turned away and trudged off, unsteadily, using a wooden walking stick.

“Bye… er… do you have a name?”

She didn’t turn round.  “Sure.”

“Mine’s… Sar..ah…”

The old lady mumbled something, Sarah didn’t fully catch.

Very odd.  Sarah watched her go, slowly disappearing through a path of flattened foliage into the woods.  Sarah shrugged and went back inside the grand old house.  Their grand old house.  Smiling with pride, she grabbed the metal wallpaper scraper and busied herself in the huge living room.  Well, it was huge compared to their dingy end-terraced in Eccles.

She thought of the aged woman, as she laboriously stripped the walls.  Why was she so aloof?  Maybe her age.  Probably lost her husband.  Anyway, nothing could spoil this dream move for her and Mike.  They’d saved up, sold up and here they were, amid the beautiful scenery of the Peak District.  It was a bit of a drive for Mike, but beat the concrete jungle any time.

The house sale – damn cheap too for its size and location – went smoothly and Mike’s transfer would hopefully come through soon.  Sarah recalled her excitement as she checked on Google Maps how close this house was to his new prospective workplace.  “Ten miles and just half an hour’s drive,” she’d said excitedly.  They’d hugged because they both knew it could really happen.  Mike had joked that he couldn’t wait to be like Nick Berry in Heartbeat, him being so fed up with working the city.  They were just up the road from one of her favourite places too: The Peak District national Park.  It truly was meant to be.

Sarah stopped scraping as she saw a girl’s name scrawled on the wall.  It was faded, but she could just about make it out.  Lucinder.  Bet it’s when a kid who’d lived here had measured herself.  But there was no pencilled line, just the number 8 beside it.  Aw, must be her age.  She scraped some more and saw Jennifer 9.  It reminded her of the fact they couldn’t have kids.  It wasn’t Mike’s fault, it was her.  It had been a dark day when the doctor had informed them, but Mike was the perfect gent about it – “It doesn’t change anything. I love you and always will, Sarah.”

Glancing again at the names, she shook thoughts of kids away.  This new house was their ‘baby’.  If it wasn’t for their… her… infertility, then they probably wouldn’t have self-indulged with the move.  Now though, nothing would spoil this for them.

Hearing a crunching sound, she paused and glanced through the bay window.  It was Mike pulling up on the drive, the four by four’s sidelights flicked off.  She ran to the front door, like a giggly school girl.

They embraced, a tingle of excitement shooting through her.

“Bloody’ell, darkness falls quick round here, dunnit?”

“It’s lovely though.”

“Certainly is, babe.”  They unhooked themselves.

“Drive home okay?”

Mike grinned.  “Stunning scenery… and I defo went the scenic route.”

They strolled down the hall into the living room.  “What do you mean?”

“I was driving round in circles for twenty minutes. Bloody Sat-Nav lost its signal.”

Sarah picked up the scraper again.  “Work okay?”

“Same shit, different day. Need I say more?”  He raised his eyebrows. “So, what’ve you been up to? Busy I see.”

“Talking to the neighbour.”  Her face contorted and she passed him a spare scraper.

“Hang on, let me get me bloody coat off, cheeky.”  He took it off, lay it on their new leather suite that was still covered in plastic while they decorated.  “What’s with the face? We’ve not moved close to weirdos have we? I get enough of them at work, and that’s just supervision!”  He grinned again.  “I knew things had gone too well.”

“Nah, just this old lady. She was a bit strange, but I’m sure she’ll come round, once she gets to know us.”

“Strange?”

“Wouldn’t look at me or tell me her name.”

“That’s cos yer a dodgy Mancunian.”

“Oy! Says the man arrested in his teens for joyriding.”

“I didn’t know the car was stolen, honest. And there was no charge.”  Mike regarded her, mischief dancing in his eyes.  “Anyhow, you calling me a scrote?”  He tickled her and they laughed and wriggled, then embraced and kissed.

Sarah broke free first.  “Here, I want to show you something.”  She passed him the spare scraper and this time he took it.  She pointed at the girls’ names.

“And?”

“And, nothing, it’s just… help me. Let’s see if there’s any more.”

Mike looked at the bay window and walked over, shutting the blinds.  Opposite, trees swayed and creaked in the wind.  He reached up and shut the top windows before peering out of the window.  “It’s pitch black out there. You can really see the stars. No light pollution here, eh?”

“Here’s another one…”  Abigail 4.

Mike studied the names.  “So the previous owners had three girls. Bet they’re grown up by now, judging by the style of this crappy old wallpaper.”

They both scraped away.

“Mike. Look.”

Sarah pointed at another name.  They stared agog.  Joanna 10  – screamer.  “What the hell does ‘screamer’ mean?”

“Dunno.”

Sarah heard a dull thud and jumped.  It came from below, in the bowels of the house.  “You hear that?”

“What? Hey, steady on, babe. Old houses make noises you know. Chill.”  He smiled reassuringly, smoothed a hand across her cheek.  “So do yer reckon the numbers are their ages?”

“Assume so.”  She was still looking through the open living room door into the hall.

They continued peeling off the paper with vigour.

Mike suddenly stopped.  “Bloody’ell, Sarah.”  He pointed.  “They’re not ages… they’re marks… marks out of ten. What the…?”

Sarah saw the name Layla 9 / 10.  She quickly scanned the other names and numbers.  Jennifer 9 also had  / 10, but it was somewhat faded.

“Jesus. What is this, hun?”

“Don’t worry. It’s probably nothing. Summat obvious, that we’re missing.”

They bounced looks, then continued.

Sarah stopped, leaned against the wall, arms up.

“What’s up, babe?”

“It was just something the old lady said as she walked off.”

“What? What did she say?”

“I thought she said, ‘They never caught him, you know’, or something like that.”

“Really?”  Mike looked stern, not his usual self, fuelling Sarah’s angst.

“I think so. Does your laptop get a signal here.”

“Er. Not sure. Not had chance to check yet, but I’m paying for it and the telly’s working, so it should do. I can give it a go.”  He walked into the dining room and grabbed his laptop from the drawer of the sideboard containing his football trophies.  Sarah joined him as he turned it on and placed it on the dining room table.  They both sat down and waited for Windows to fire up.

“Yes!”  The Web browser opened.  “Okay, what are we searching for exactly?”

Sarah hesitated, then said in a hushed voice.  “Missing girls in Derbyshire?”  Mike frowned at her, shook his head, and typed it in.

They stared as eight photos came up.  “Jesus Christ. Look at the names, Mike.”

Suddenly the lights and laptop went off.

Sarah felt ice shoot up her spine, and screamed.

“Shit. Okay, calm down. Give me your hand. It’s okay, babe. I’ve gotta torch on me phone.”  After a few seconds fumbling, he lit the immediate vicinity, shining the light around, causing shifting shapes of the furniture around them.

“Did you see that? The names… I’m really scared, Mike.”

“Come on. Get a grip. Please. I’ll go down to the cellar.”

“No, don’t leave me.”

“I won’t. We’ll both go. It’s probably just a blown fuse. The house hasn’t been lived in for a while. They did say that, remember? That’s why we got it so cheap. Needed a bit of work.”

They moved slowly out of the dining room, into the living room, through the hall and up to the door beneath the staircase.  Sarah felt a shudder as she peered into the kitchen to the rear, its dense blackness seemed to stare back at her.  She quickly looked away, holding Mike’s hand every step of the way.

Thankfully, the door to the cellar didn’t creak.  The phone torchlight wasn’t so bright, and Sarah felt jumpy, seeing dark, fluctuating shapes and shadows.  She’d not been down here before.  It smelled really musty.  The stairs were stone and their footsteps seemed amplified by the gloom.

“You okay?”

She didn’t answer.

“Right. The fuse-box is over here somewhere.”

“What’s that?”

“What?”

“There. Looks like another door.”

“Oh yeah. Not noticed that before.”

In the far corner was the shape of an old dark wooden door, somewhat camouflaged in the brown stone brickwork.  “We’ll take a look in a minute.”

“We don’t have to.”

“Here we go.”  He shone the torch at the fuse-box.  “You’ll have to just let go of my hand for a minute.”

Sarah released her grip, her hand clammy, her heartbeat audible.

“Yep, as I thought.”  A click later, and the lights came on, including the bare bulb just above them.

Mike grinned.  “You gonna relax now, babe?”

The wooden door burst open and a dark figure flew at them.  The sword swung at Mike before he could turn, and it cut through the air toward his head.

Sarah screamed and froze to the spot.  Everything funnelled in, like slow motion.  The bearded man wearing a long black cloak turned to her.  He leered, his manic eyes shining with glee.  She looked at Mike and he staggered.  His expression was fixed, wide-eyed.  His head slowly slid from his neck and fell off onto the stone floor.  It bounced, settled and he stared up at her, like a dead salmon.  His jerking body crumpled beside her, blood spurting onto her legs from the gaping neck.

Catatonic, she couldn’t scream.  Her legs wobbly, she turned to the stairs and clambered up.  She instantly heard throaty laughter and felt sturdy hands gripping her ankles, as her bladder gave way.  She was pulled back down, slowly, her chin buffeting the steps, one by one.  At the bottom, he grabbed her by the hair and an excruciating pain ripped through her scalp as she was dragged past Mike’s head, those eyes still staring, helplessly.

“I hope you’re a ten out of ten, like Joanna,” the man said gruffly, before slamming the door.

BIO:  Col Bury is the former award-winning Crime Editor of Thrillers, Killers ‘n’ Chillers. His short stories have featured in many anthologies, most notably, THE MAMMOTH BOOKS OF BEST BRITISH CRIME 9, 10 & 11. Col is the author of two short stories collections, MANCHESTER 6 and THE COPS OF MANCHESTER and his debut novel, MY KIND OF JUSTICE will be out in June 2015 via Caffeine Nights Publishing.

Amazon UK http://amzn.to/1HjTSYo   Amazon US http://amzn.to/1KV3f1m

Website http://colburysnewcrimefiction.blogspot.co.uk/

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Manchester-Series-by-Col-Bury/236941263032722

Twitter @ColBurywriter

 

Suffering Succubi by Matt Hilton…

‘I am “freedom”.’

The woman stood on the penultimate step on the descent to the cellar. She had halted there, standing in silence, waiting for my bloodied eyes to register her presence, for my concussed brain to make sense of her.

Even with clots adhering to my lashes, my eyelids swollen from the repeated beatings, she was a vision of beauty.

An emerald green dress fit as closely as her musky scent to a body as perfect as any masterpiece designed by Michelangelo. Blazing red hair hung about her shoulders, curls bunching on the swellings of her breasts. Her dress was cut low and I watched the slow rise and fall of the pale orbs that it strained to contain. On her feet were satin slippers, as green as the dress, as green as her eyes as they surveyed me.

‘Have you come to let me go?’

‘I have come to set you free,’ she corrected in a voice as mellifluous as distant birdsong.

‘Then undo these chains and I’ll be gone from here.’ I was trussed to an upright beam, stripped naked as a baby.

‘You misunderstand me, Carter Bailey,’ she said, and this time her voice was every bit as sweet as before, but it was the sweetness of decay and rot.

‘Worth a try,’ I said.

She took the final step down and halted again. Her features appeared set in porcelain, her lips were the painted smile of a creepy pot doll, eyes as solid as their emerald twins. A dim bulb flickered in the stairwell above her, causing the shadows to jitter and shift. The woman’s shadow did not move, because she had none.

‘Who are you?’

‘I am the one you came looking for.’

‘You are Saoirse?’ I gave her name the modern Irish pronunciation: Sur-shuh.

‘Seer-sha,’ she corrected, in the singsong original Celtic tongue. ‘As I said, my name means “freedom”.’

I rattled my chains, thinking of my brother, Cassius, who regularly wore chains when I visited him in the deepest dungeon of my psyche. I could almost feel pity for the depraved lunatic now that I experienced a little of the discomfort he was eternally subjected to. Almost, but not quite. Cash deserved his torment; he could never atone for the suffering he put my wife and unborn child through, or the dozens of other women he raped and slaughtered before I killed the bastard.

Sticks and stones, Carter. Cash’s taunting voice scratched its way through the recesses of my mind. Just thinking of him was enough to wake him from slumber. He’d been conspicuous by his absence during my beating, when I needed his assistance most.

I ignored Cash and concentrated instead on Saoirse.

She moved without seeming to move. She didn’t walk, that was for sure, because I was eyeballing her long, long legs, imagining them wrapped around my back and they never once put as much as a ruffle in that form-hugging dress. The lustful thought clung on, even after I realised that it was more akin to something that Cash would voice, and I had to tear my attention back to her face. No, she hadn’t walked over, yet when I tilted my head up to meet her gaze, she was directly in front of me, so close I felt the exhalation of her breath on my skin.

‘Why did you seek me, Carter Bailey?’

‘Why do you think?’

‘You thought to kill me.’

‘Killing you was never an issue, I hoped only to stop any further killing.’

‘Yet you brought with you a gun.’ Saoirse lifted her right hand and something cold and hard-edged settled under my jaw. ‘And this.’

I couldn’t see what it was that she held to my throat, but I didn’t have to. I knew it was the knife handed to me by my friend and mentor, Paul Broom, Britain’s sixteenth bestselling horror author, when he heard of my latest fool mission.

‘It just might come in handy, Bailey,’ he had said as he handed over the intricately carved silver blade. The handle was bone and looked too much like the knobby end of a human fibular to be coincidence.

‘There might be nothing in the stories,’ I’d told him. ‘You know how urban legends grow out of folk tales and take on a life of their own: do you really think a succubus is alive and kicking and harvesting souls in bleakest Lancashire?’

‘I’ve heard crazier stories,’ he said with a pointed squint at me.

Broom was one of the few people who truly believed in my claim that the soul of my serial-killing sibling was trapped within me, and that the shared near death experience we’d experienced had made him my captive when the paramedics jump-started my heart again. Having discovered what he’d done to my wife and unborn child, my brother had almost murdered me too, but I’d turned the tables and took the fight back to him. Locked in brutal combat we’d both taken a fall from the dilapidated windmill on my property, and sank, still beating and tearing at each other into the stagnant waters of the canal below. Our bodies drowned, but our spirits had still been coiled together in battle when the intervention of well-meaning paramedics had snatched us both back to my mortal coil. It was a difficult claim to palate, but Broom took it even without the proverbial pinch of salt. Broom also believed in my proclaimed ability to read people’s auras, and to also feel the pull of dark energy, and he’d almost convinced me that I wasn’t totally bat shit crazy after all. Limping about on a walking stick, throwing back his mane of blond curls, he reminds me of an aging rock star or over the hill pro-wrestler. On his knuckles he’d had the letters WWDAD tattooed as a reminder of his constant fight against the supernatural denizens of his fevered author’s mind. What would Derek Acorah do? I wondered. I was pretty sure that the famed psychic medium wouldn’t have sought a soul-sucking succubus armed only with a tarnished silver knife and a handgun: at the very least he’d have had a camera crew and the backing of a major cable TV company behind him. Foolishly I’d come to this backstreet of Blackpool alone. And now I’d paid the price of my stupidity. I should have weighed in that knife at one of the many skanky stores that lined the neighbourhood promising ‘We Buy Your Scrap Gold and Silver’.

But I hadn’t been able to deny the tugging in my chest, the feeling within me that drew me like metal filings to a lodestone, whenever I sensed the presence of dark energy. Cash had to atone for his crimes; I had to atone for my failings. In failing to protect my wife and baby I had accepted my self-imposed punishment to root out and destroy evil wherever it reared its ugly head. I tried to think of it as an extreme form of community service, while Broom preferred that I was serving a higher court than human law.

Saoirse removed the knife from my throat. My relief was only momentary. She laid it between my legs.

Whoa! Hold on there, Red! Go ahead and cut Carter’s friggin’ throat but I’m going to need the old family jewels when I take claim of his body!

It was nice of Cash to express his concern for my well being. Yeah, right. In my head, I told him, “Cash, she’s not interested in taking my bollocks. She’s after souls and guess what? Here she gets the special BOGOF deal.”

Shit, Cash said, I never thought about it that way.

“Now would be a good time to loan me a few of those special skills you have in your arsenal, dear brother.”

When imprisoning Cash in the dungeon of my mind I’d to devise the most intricate methods of containment, because in life the son of a bitch had been as tricky as Harry Houdini, and simply locking him down with handcuffs and gaffer tape had never been enough.

‘What are you mumbling about?’ asked Saoirse.

‘Nothing important,’ I lied. ‘Just wondering if you really look like that or if you’re a fan of old Maureen O’Hara movies.’

‘You like the way I look?’

‘Of course. Who wouldn’t?’

Saoirse proved as vain as most other supernatural beings I’d met who used the weapon of sexual desire to deceive and enrapture before sucking your life force out of every orifice imaginable. To be fair I hadn’t met many. Actually, she was my first, but she was vain all right.

She was at once before me then at the bottom of the stairs again. She ran one hand through her fiery hair, the other on her propped hip. Then she turned away, turning her head to give me a smoky pout over one bared shoulder. The dress shimmered off her body as liquid as mercury, puddling around her finely turned ankles, and I was given a view of her in all her glory.

‘What about now?’ she teased.

“Yeah, now would be a good time,” I told Cash.

Scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours, bro.

“How about a nice Perspex cell with a view?”

How’s about you set me up on a barstool at Hooters?

“Take it or leave it, Cash. Agree, or your next prison will be inside the lovely Seer-sha’s gut.”

‘Do you find me comely?’ Saoirse turned with a dancer’s grace, and again was before me without any sign of apparent volition. I’d have got an eyeful of her main assets if she hadn’t looped her knife hand over her breasts. Her other hand, and my Glock, was artistically placed over the juncture of her thighs.

‘”Comely” isn’t a word used very often these days,’ I said. ‘Just how old are you?’

‘As old as Lilith’s children,’ she said with a smile.

‘It’s surprising what the odd nip and tuck can do for you these days, isn’t it?’ Despite myself I could feel the ardor rising in me. Ardor’s another word you don’t hear much and has kind of fallen out of usage except in poorly written bonk buster novels or the latest Paul Broom chiller. I’d learned a lot of old words since Broom had taken it upon himself to be my Professor X. I’d learned quite a few archaic names too, and understood that Lilith in some religious texts was recognised as the first female, even before Eve. If Saoirse wasn’t exaggerating it meant she’d been around a loooong time.

‘That can’t possibly be your own hair colour?’ I sneaked a peek down and the hand clutching the gun couldn’t cover everything. ‘You dye down there too?’

For the first time Saoirse frowned.

Unlike highly emotional humans this woman did not radiate the auric colours that I was used to. All that outlined her form was a hazy grey smoke. But I didn’t need the firework displays that emanated from my usual quarries to tell me she was growing angry.

‘You do not appreciate this form?’ she said. ‘Perhaps you would prefer I was an incubus instead?’

‘Strictly heterosexual,’ I reassured her. ‘It’s just that I don’t fancy every strumpet that drops her knickers in front of me.’

‘Strumpet?’

Another old word, but it was one she’d understand. Before leaving Broom’s place for Blackpool, my knowledgeable buddy had told me that the etymology of the name succubus came from the Late Latin succubare, or “to lie under”, later shortened to succuba and literally “strumpet”.

‘Old whore, if you’d prefer?’ I said.

Saoirse made a sound that should never have come from her enchantress form. She bubbled out a growl like a drunken hobo clearing his throat after a night on methylated spirits.

She raised Broom’s silver knife.

Go on, Red, cut his throat.

“Shut it, Cash. Concentrate on what you’re good at.”

Maybe you should let me take over, bro. I’ll show the hot little bitch a good time, all right.

“Just get us the fuck out of these chains!”

Saoirse said, ‘I can take your essence whether you wish to mate with me or not.’

‘Honestly, I’d rather you slit my throat. I hear that sexually penetrating a succubus is akin to entering a cavern of ice. Where’s the pleasure in that? And anyway, what’s this about you taking a man’s semen then passing it onto one of your incubus brothers so he can impregnate women with his demonic little offspring? What do you call them: Cambions aren’t they?’

‘You’ve researched well,’ Saoirse said, and my taunting had worked because she’d forgotten about sticking the blade in my neck and again moved away from me.

‘Everything I know you can find on Wikipedia,’ I told her. ‘Is that what you’re up to here? Breeding your own little crop of Cambions. Don’t bother, from the number of ugly inbred trolls I’ve seen out on the Golden Mile someone already beat you to it.’

‘You know little of my kind after all. And this know-it-all Wikipedia is as ill informed as the fools that write it. Too much faith has been placed in the Malleus Maleficarum as a source document, and your modern “Witches’ Hammer” – your Wikipedia – holds as many misinterpretations of the truth. My kind has no interest in your dishwater semen: it is your life essence that we desire. I’m coming now to set it free!’

Suddenly Saoirse wasn’t the enchanting vision of beauty of before.

Her looks fell from her in the shimmering river of mercury that had earlier shed her dress.

Her fiery mane shrivelled into a keeled skull, her almost translucent skin metamorphosing into warty grey hide. Her breasts shrivelled like dried out teabags left on the side of a saucer at one of those backstreet cafes. Her pubis went bare, and her labia hung like soiled rags. Horrible enough before I looked up again at her face and saw that her green eyes had sunk back into the skull and were now snot-coloured currants deep beneath a thick brow, and her mouth…Oh, Jesus. Think anus, puckered, hemorrhoid-ridden, with needle teeth.

I take back what I said before, Cash said. I wouldn’t even touch her with yours, bro.

Saoirse let out a keening hiss. Expelled urine and other foul liquids dripped down her upper thighs, but the sound had come from her awful mouth. Kind of a mating call, I guessed. Then she came for me.

‘Now would be a good time to do your thing, Cash!’

In my urgency I’d shouted out loud.

My odd words were enough to halt Saoirse in her tracks.

Her arms hung by her sides, my weapons still clutched in mitts that were boney and ended in ragged claws. Maybe she still thought she could get me up by threat of a bullet or knife slash: such foreplay never did it for me. But now she paused to contemplate just whom the hell I was shouting at.

From above filtered the clumping of footsteps. Saoirse had her lackeys on stand by; they were the same sons of bitches who’d grabbed me, kicked the shit out of me and then hung me here in the bitch’s cellar like a side of tenderized beef. They were an ugly bunch, and pitiless, so maybe there was something in the Cambion myth that Saoirse wasn’t letting on. Any second now and those brutes would come downstairs and hold me down while Saoirse had her wicked way with me.

‘Cash!’

Allez, hop! cried my demented brother, like he was some old time circus performer. Let’s go, bro.

For the last minute or so I’d been working my fingers and wrists, manipulating them without any conscious sense, really Cash working his wizardry through my hands without any assistance from me.

The chains fell from my wrists just as Saoirse puckered up for a kiss. I struggled to free my arms from the clinging links, and Saoirse just put my energetic thrashings down to one playing hard to get. Her needle teeth nipped into my lips and she clamped on tight. A slick, wriggling tongue invaded my mouth and I coughed in revulsion. It was colder than three days old polar bear shit, and tasted just as bad.

Earlier I’d imagined Saoirse’s long legs wrapped around my middle. Well, the dream became reality, and it was a nightmare. I felt the icy clamminess of her vagina as she tried to clamp on, her second puckered opening chewing its path up my left thigh towards my genitals. The only saving grace was that at least this one didn’t come with teeth. Let alone her trying to latch onto my penis, the invasion of my mouth was bad enough, and then the extraction of souls began.

Fuckin’ hell, Carter, she’s starting with me!

It wasn’t often my brother panicked. He was generally too sociopathic to care about anything, except when it was his own immortal soul. In all honesty I contemplated waiting for a while, allowing the soul-sucking demoness to gulp down Cash’s spirit – shit, I’d been looking for a way to expel his soul from mine for good, and now an unconventional opportunity had presented itself – but as much as I hated the murderous piece of shit, I hated Saoirse’s violation of my body more.

I wrenched loose from the chains and gripped hold of her right hand. A trick I’d learned during a self-defence class stripped the knife from her grip. More likely it was desperation that made the technique work than any skill but the knife was now in my hand and I reversed it just as Saoirse realised she’d been fooled. She snapped her tongue from my mouth and reared back, and the curve of her fangs almost tore my lips off before she’d fully disengaged.

I stood before her.

She looked down at my empty hands.

Then dawning realisation struck and she peered down at the only boner she’d get from me: the erect handle of the silver knife jutted from between her shrivelled breasts.

She was dead; she just didn’t know it yet.

I reached out, braced my palm against the knife handle and gave her a shove.

She fell flat on her back and didn’t move.

Broom would be happy to hear that the supposed magical knife had worked better than even he’d imagined. He swore that the blade had been forged by some vizier of the Zoharistic Kabbalah persuasion and was based upon a much earlier design. The first knife was made for none other than the Archangel Samael after he had a bit of a fling with Lilith and realised that he’d made a major faux pas when she wouldn’t return to Adam in the Garden of Eden. Samael’s way of getting rid of the bunny boiling temptress was to have a knife forged by Tubal Cain, the first metal worker, that could do Lilith and her kind in for good. I didn’t have the heart to tell my friend that you couldn’t rely on EBay as a source for genuine angelic weapons, but now I wouldn’t have to.

I left the knife jammed in the succubus’s breastbone. Maybe by extracting it she would rise up again like a vampire in a Hammer movie. I reached instead for the gun. It would be more effective than a blade against the group of Cambions now thumping down the stairs.

Naked, my mushy lips a match for my mushed up face, I greeted the fuckers as they stomped down and stood in a semi-circle behind their late mistress. Blazing auric colours sparked all around them. They were pissed. But then so was I.

‘Cash,’ I said. ‘Time for your special skills again.’

With pleasure, bro.

My gun hand came up. Truthfully, Cash, my murderous brother wasn’t the only one in control of my fingers this time.

BIO:  Matt Hilton is the bestselling author of the Joe Hunter thriller series, but also enjoys writing in other genres, one of which is horror. Matt has had ten Joe Hunter thrillers published to date, plus ebooks of Hunter short tales, with more to come. He has self-published four horror novels (Dominion, Darkest Hour, Preternatural and The Shadows Call) as eBooks and paperbacks and also edited and collected the terrific Action: Pulse Pounding Tales Vols 1 and 2 anthologies, and a number of his short stories have appeared in various collections and anthologies. He has a new thriller series featuring the characters Tess and Po debuting late in 2015.

Find out more about Matt at http://www.matthiltonbooks.com 

Matt was also the founder of Thrillers, Killers ‘n’ Chillers and the thriller editor.

Carter and Cash Bailey appear in the novel PRETERNATURAL by Matt Hilton and is available in ebook http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00IR9XS4G/ref=cm_sw_r_fa_dp_2-rsvb1141PF4 and paperback formats http://www.amazon.co.uk/Preternatural-Matt-Hilton/dp/1499599919/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

Nice Jewish Boy by Paul Greenberg

 

I seemed to have found a niche, I thought, as I worked the lobby of the Marriot. The affair in the ballroom was the Bat Mitzvah of Ms. Jennifer Sandler of Springfield, Massachusetts. It didn’t take long to spot a mark walking towards the bar.

5’3, jet-black hair, curvy. A tiny black dress with a string of pearls around her neck, a yellow and white Bvlgari snake watch, crawling up her right wrist, estimated value, about twenty grand, rings, but no wedding ring. Too bad.

When I got to the bar she was ordering a Tanquery and tonic. I ordered myself a JB on the rocks. “Jewish Booze,” she commented. “Drink up, it’s open bar.” She gave me the big eye, admiring my Brooks Brothers suit, navy with blue and white bead stripe, white shirt, tie and shoes, hesitating ever so briefly on my 18K yellow President Rolex with the diamond dial. I could see the calculator in her brain working, estimating its value. About twelve grand, by the way. Now I knew what I was up against.

She tossed back her drink and headed in the direction of the rest rooms, looking over her shoulder to make sure that I was following her. Her foot was holding the door to the ladies room open when I got there, so I went it.

“Lock it,” she said. I did as I was told. She was against the wall pulling up her dress and moving her panties aside.

“Fuck me,” she said. So I unzipped and banged her against the tile walls.

After we were done, she told me her name was Molly Gold, and asked me mine. “Bill Stein,” I said, as I washed up at the sink.

I watched her as she fumbled in her handbag, pulling out a barrette at the same time separating a box cutter from the rest of the crap in there. Looking in the mirror, she pulled her hair into a bun while I moved in back of her and kissed her neck. She pushed her ass against me.

“Come on. I’ll introduce you. My friends will be so glad that I found a nice Jewish boy.”

“There’s only one problem,” I whispered into her ear. “I’m not nice.” I tightened my arms around her neck and twisted sharply to the left. There was that sickening snap. Her head slumped. Then done. Christ, I thought. I hate when women pigeonhole me.

I dropped her like a hot knish, grabbing the pearl necklace, the Bvlgari and the rings.  I looked in her handbag and picked out the box cutter. Primitive, but effective, I thought and tossed it in the direction of the toilet.

I peeked outside the door. The party was in full swing in the main ballroom. I took off for the exit in the opposite direction.

When I got to my BMW, I consulted the local newspapers that I had purchased that morning. I could still make the 4:00 pm in Holyoke. After that I could hop on Route 391 to Interstate 91, work Connecticut and then straight into Bergen County.

It was late March and spring was in the air. A beautiful time for a wedding, I thought.

 

Paul Greenberg’s crime fiction can be read at Out of the Gutter, All Due Respect and Shotgun Honey. He lives in Beverly, Massachusetts with his wife Sandy and two sons. http://pgreenbergcrime.wordpress.com/

One Fingertip by Peter DiChellis

Hey. You ever hear about me? I’m a murder victim. A dead man. I’m a murderer too. What else am I? A wealthy liar and a brazen thief. All that.

Want to know what happened? I can’t spill everything. Because you might whisper my wicked secret to your best friend or yap about it on Facebook or goddamn tweet it or something. And I can’t let you do that. I will share a tiny morsel of my story, though. Just one sweet taste. And only for you.

I used to work in the money-cleaning business. Drug dealers in the Brooklyn mob paid me to turn their dope money legitimate. Make it untraceable. I had a business partner, a former Bahamian banker who lived uptown. Then one day he told me he decided to hold onto some of the money we’d cleaned. Said he needed time to think.

But here’s the thing. In the money-cleaning business nobody needs time to think. You just need to move the fucking merchandise and keep your mouth shut. So when people hold onto money and say they need time to think, I get nervous. And that’s why I did what had to be done.

The cops got an anonymous call about a suspicious odor coming from my apartment. I used an old pay phone in another state to make the call. Wiped my prints from the coins first. Wore gloves. Told the cops the putrid smell in the apartment must be a couple of dead rats who should have known better. That’s why the stink reached all the way to another area code, I said.

I didn’t leave much evidence in the apartment. My blood-smeared bathtub, of course, scarred with deep cuts in the sides and on the bottom. From the ax and the meat cleaver. Some of the blood was mine, but most was my business partner’s. All the bone chips and specks of soft tissue were his. I also left behind half a pack of heavy-duty trash bags, with no prints. I didn’t need to use the whole pack because my business partner wasn’t an especially large man.

And in the bathtub drain, I laid the tip of one of my fingers, hacked off at the top joint. Soon enough, some CSI genius used that one fingertip, the only body part they’ll ever find, to identify me as one of the victims, not the killer. By now you probably guessed the cops had my prints on file, so my fingertip made it easy for them to ID me. I’ll bet you figured out I kept the cleaned dope money, too, though the cops don’t know anything about that.

Maybe I told you too much already, but let me tell you one more thing. Just so we have a clear understanding between us. Next time you’re out somewhere, in a bar or coffee shop or anywhere really, maybe you’ll see a man with one fingertip missing. It might be me. Don’t stare. And don’t reach for your phone. When people stare and reach for a phone, I get nervous. And then I do whatever has to be done.

You understand, right?

 

Peter DiChellis writes short mystery and suspense fiction. His sinister tales appear at Over My Dead Body!, Shotgun Honey, YELLOW MAMA, and other popular online ezines, and in the mystery anthologies The Shamus Sampler (Volumes I and II) andPlan B Volume III. Peter is a member of the Short Mystery Fiction Society. For more, visit his site Murder and Fries athttp://murderandfries.wordpress.com/

Uber-Death Translator by Chris Benton

I was trying to warm my bony ass upon a cold drift-wood stool at the Fat Pelican, when Megan walked in wearing a delicate black dress that the sea wind wouldn’t dare tear off.  Megan was more than a Pelican confessor, she was a colleague; she never gave a breathing fuck about the addictions, physical afflictions or mental illnesses of parents, she was only wanting, waiting, even panting for the moronic miracles of two, maybe four students that could be possibly snared within the terminal web of her passion. I was fascinated by her, more than fascinated; I was madly in love with her, and I’d only known her for nine gestating months before the tragedy.

She sat beside me with a fleeting glance. Most of the denizens were standing, screaming about what had happened, perfectly oblivious of us. I didn’t know what to say to her, but she said it for me.

“Hey David, wow, this shit is growing some serious wings.”

“Yeah, some of it,” I said.

“You know all of it,” she told me, and she was right.

“I’m sorry Meg.”

“Why the fuck are you sorry? I wasn’t even there.”

“I know, but I already heard about Julian’s diary.”

“Wow, that was fast, I never even get a chance to fucking read it. Mae, give me a shot of Old Crow, with a red Bud chaser.”

Mae was fast and Megan was faster, swallowing the sad marriage within a minute. She slowly unhooked her hair and her long red mane began to burn through the dim, doomed space; a blessed lantern lighting the drunken darkness, giving migraines to the bitter Mermen and failed fathers flanking us.

Megan lit a Salem, and I couldn’t help brooding upon her brand. I never knew she smoked. I never smelled it. I nodded and she proffered one. I quit smoking two years ago, but when she lit it for me I felt the smooth arms of hell welcoming me home once more.

“David, it’s men like you that created telepathy.”

“My silence was always notoriously transparent.”

“Is that why your wife left you?”

You sagacious little slut, I nearly said, instead I raised my shot glass. “Cheers.”

“That was a cunt thing to say David, I’m sorry.” She palmed my right hand, which was clenched on the bar’s scarred skin. Her own skin was cool, clammy and so terribly tender, a small biography of lifelong, relentless terror. My dick stirred with the sudden intimacy. She was probably still fucking with me; she was smoking Salem’s for Chrissakes. Who the fuck knew what other casually cruel spells she had in store for my bony ass? As far as I felt, my heart was just another chew-toy, like Julian’s.

“When did you first fuck him?” Not why, but when, it was a ninety yard fucking pass of a question. Try catching that one, my darkly damaged beloved.

“I didn’t first fuck him, I sucked his cock,” she said, before ordering another round for both of us. She lit another Salem and added, “It was the coldest cock I’ve ever tasted. I sucked it long and hard for nearly twenty minutes, even breaking a sweat. It still tasted like a fudge sickle. And he didn’t even come, which bummed me out; cold heart, cold cock, minus the cold cum, the formula shall remain tragically incomplete.”

She caught the ball alright, and tore it to pieces with her teeth. I downed my shot of Old Crow and it swam coldly down my throat, into my belly, forever failing to be warmed.

“So what did he say about me?”

“What do you mean?”

“David, bullshit does not become you. One of your strong suits, that and your gigantically sad fucking eyes. I swear, you have the baby black holes of a molested child. Did your Aunt ever suck your cock?”

“Yes, I read it.”

“And???”

“He loved you.”

“More than you do?”

“Maybe, in a more distorted way.”

“So you are in love with me.” She lipped another Salem and pushed the pack towards me like a malign passport. I took another, of course. “Distorted,” she echoed, “What a disgusting fucking word.” She lit her cigarette and buried any remaining disgust in smoke. I decided to bare my soul, what was left of it anyway.

“Yeah, Meg, I fell for you the first time I met you during lunch break, you were theorizing about the lonely orgasms of Flannery O’Connor, and my heart has been a fucking hostage ever since.”

“That’s nice, David, why didn’t you wine and dine me? Separation still too fresh?”

“Maybe. Perhaps I’m a fucking coward; perhaps Julian is the true romantic.”

“Was, you wannabe amputee. What exactly did he say about me, what do your dirty little cookie-jar-hands remember?”

Ok, she wanted it, so I gave it: “December 17^th, 2012, My English teacher Megan Winnow is a profoundly sad little woman, yet her urine burns brighter than memory. Megan shall be my long companion, and I shall be her Uber-Death Translator, she will never be afraid before the shivering turn, our brains are impervious to pain and our hearts are impervious to hell.”

“His last entry,” she said. She gazed into her empty shot glass like a gorgon and when Mae asked if she needed another she turned Mae into stone. Like the clockwork of all ruined lives, the TV’s over the bar were suddenly wearing her face, her smile, a smile so bright it drank the whole, hacked apart purgatory of the Pelican for ten timeless seconds. After her smile were the even brighter smiles of her dead, and the face of Julian, Julian the true romantic, Julian who knew the hidden temperatures of Megan’s mind and body, Julian, the Iceman never cometh, Julian, the Uber-Death Translator.

Megan finished her beer in the cathode silence; the frail, black flower of her dress had withered into seaweed from the thousand putrid thoughts around us. She smiled at me, not the blinding network smile that held all our ravaged souls rapt, a smile that spoke again of another Megan beyond her bitter words that terrible distances bred. She kissed me, laying this memory on my tongue, and left forever without paying.

Bio:  Chris Benton was born and raised in Wilmington, North Carolina where he still resides until his parole. His stories are lingering at A TWIST OF NOIR, PLOTS WITH GUNS, THRILLER’S KILLER’S ‘N’ CHILLERS, THRILLS, KILLS ‘N’ CHAOS, BLACKHEART NOIR, CRIME FACTORY, AND SHOTGUN HONEY He can be found on Facebook…

Buckets In Southwark by Lily Childs

Cold wrists and a cold heart that barely dared beat, lest he think her willing. She let it tremble – he wasn’t here today and for that she was truly grateful.

They peppered every spare space in the poorly-lit basement. She’d given up trying to count them because whenever he came down and did what he did to their tiny corpses, he’d throw them back into the room afterwards, discarding them, forgetting them until the next time he got the urge. Some lay at her broken feet now, gazing at nothing; once demure.

The tears came again. Incarcerated without the need for chains in a hovel of her own stupidity. “Look at you,” her friends had said. “You’re gorgeous. Why would you want to look like someone else, especially her?” And they spoke her name with such malice, such disgust… she should have listened.

Outside, a thin mist of snow swirled in widdershins along the streets of Southwark, whipping around ankles and stinging pink faces. Walkers slid and laughed in some kind of wonder.

It should have been magical, but the winter weather brought no joy to the basement, instead a new fear poked insidious fingers at its resident. The only light to penetrate the square room came from the small, grubby window below pavement level. When that became obscured with freezing flakes the basement would be plunged into a murky darkness. The waiting, the dread of hearing his lumbering footsteps on the stairway would be magnified. At least with a little light there were distractions, albeit pitiful, but to be blind in this place of torture…

And then there was the noise from the streets; voices bantering, buses roaring past too fast. The snow would insulate her against those sounds. All she’d be able to hear would be muffled mouths, crunching feet, tyres spitting sludge.

He didn’t come that night.

Nor the next.

She slept right through, starving and exhausted, not caring if she crossed over into death’s cold embrace.

A dull yellow hue greeted her when she finally awoke, drowning the basement in a weak shade of sulphur, jaundicing her skin and that of all the little corpses. She realised she could still see.

An inch, two inches of snow carpeted the pavement above, but the window was completely clear, save for a spattering of white along the bottom frame. She shivered beneath the rough blanket and watched as her breath crystallised before dissipating up, up, up toward the street and the great outdoors.

It’s stealing my warmth.

She understood. Any heat produced by her emaciated body, any breath rasping from her lungs was escaping through that thin, single pane of glass. It was enough to melt the snow before it settled.

So that was it; the end. She couldn’t eat, couldn’t drink, walk or take a pee without help – and now even her breath was not her own. She felt her gut judder as a familiar wail of despair began to grow. When it came out, it was a skinny whisper, as skinny as she.

“Did you hear that?”

“Yeah, what the hell was it?”

“Sounded like a fox.”

“Too high-pitched. Anyway, it came from down there. There’s no garden, just a basement by the looks of it.”

Naked limbs hit the floor. Heads twisted on half-broken necks as they tumbled in a pile of wild hair, the expressions on their faces unmoving. She picked one up and threw it at the window. It missed by several feet.

“Help. Help me. Help me.”

Two pairs of black-booted feet shuffled and stamped in the snow outside on the pavement but by some miracle did not wander off.

“Hey!” she tried calling again.

Nothing.

She grabbed more of her silent companions and aimed them at the wall like fleshy darts. Weak. She was too weak. Every muscle, every sinew screamed in her wasted body as she twisted around in the bed, dragging her useless feet over the bare mattress. The new position gave her a mildly better view of the pavement and she jumped as two purple buckets dropped to the ground beside the feet above, to the jovial sound of laughter. She looked down at her own bucket on the bare floorboards, brimming with stinking waste. From nowhere a rage of adrenalin burst its way into her blood and she screamed again, a whistling, shrill banshee call that failed to penetrate the lively chat of the charity collectors outside her window. With one last cry and a double lunge at the glass, she gave up.

The world fell silent.

She couldn’t see them but the two young men on the pavement looked at one another, and turned. One crouched down to stare through the small opening in the building behind him. He reached forward to wipe the filth-speckled glass.

“What is it? What can you see?”

“It’s dark man, but it looks like… fuckin’ freaky. There’s dolls, millions of broken dolls, all over the place. And, oh. Oh Jesus.”

She didn’t hear them break in. The copper that skidded on rubber limbs snapped his wrist as he went down, his colleagues tripping over his back.

“Get up, idiot. Leeson; call for back-up and an ambulance.”

Breath in her face; old coffee and stale smokes, but not booze or the reek of loose teeth in rotting gums she’d become so accustomed to.

“Look at the state of her, guv. She must have been here for ages. Can’t have been dead long though.”

Sighs all round; what a waste.

“Ah shit. Look at this.” A clang of metal sliding on metal.

She can’t speak and she can’t move but she knows what they’ve found behind the curtain that hangs from the rafters.

His bath.

“Don’t touch anything. What…? I can’t even work out what I’m seeing here.”

Behind the policeman the corpse began to hiss from the bed. The copper turned to stare, eyes bulging in disbelief at the bubbles spilling from the mouth. Dead, but not dead.

It spoke.

“Blood, and piss, and white fire from his… his…”

“She’s alive! Leeson; where’s that ambulance?” He bent over the life-sized, shrivelled Barbie doll on the bed. Her eyebrows appeared permanently arched on the high, white forehead, topped by a mop of greasy brown hair studded with wilting platinum extensions.  Sharp cheekbones, clearly chiselled by a surgeon’s knife, poked out from her face with no meat in the sallow space below. But it was her whispering mouth that chilled him as it chattered on with lips tattooed in an everlasting pink smile.

*

The ambulance bluesed and twosed away, carrying a clumsy constable and a nameless girl who’d only ever wanted a slice of the plastic pie, to be perfect, to be wanted.

Across the street, pacing the apartment where he lived with his trophy wife, Ken removed his false teeth and tongued the gaps in his gums. They’d take his collection away, he knew it. But after buying that last live one from an ad back in the summer, it had kind of ruined the thrill anyway. Smelly. Wriggling in the bath, objecting to his manipulations and penetrations… that’s why he’d not been back for a few days now.

No matter; he had spares.

He opened the door to his bedroom and struggled to wade through the heads and torsos that spilled over his brogues. His wife was in here somewhere; he could do with some company.

Bio:  Lily Childs is a writer of dark fiction, horror and twisted crime. She lives on the south coast of England, a stone’s throw from the sea. Lily has been published many times in anthologies and collections, most recently in The Bestiarum Vocabulum, Fresh Fear and Bones. Her own collection, Cabaret of Dread is available in paperback and for Kindle on Amazon. Lily is currently completing her first novel, a supernatural horror. Find out more on her blog, The Feardom at http://lilychildsfeardom.blogspot.com

 

Cold Black Earth by Paul J. Garth

Only other time I buried something on this land I was seventeen years old. My daddy had a couple head of cattle struck rabid. We shot them where they stood and after, I spent the whole day with him digging a hole wide and deep before using the tractor to push their bodies in. He covered them in diesel and we burned them.

Tried to tell Emma and Jack that story once, how animals can get sick on a farm. It was just after their mother died and I couldn’t think of another way to explain what cancer was. Don’t think they understood though. Kid’s don’t know about the bad in the world. You try to hide it, though. Because that’s what a father is supposed to do.

But sometimes the bad finds them anyway.

Jack was the first to notice she’d gone quiet. Come up to me one night. Said, “Daddy, I think Emma’s gone deaf.”

I laughed. Told him that girls that age are strange.

“She’ll be back to fine,” I said. “Promise.”

But when they’re truth, thoughts don’t run. And Jack was right. Emma’d been acting different.

Almost May, she should have been talking about summer things she wanted to do. But she hardly spoke at all. Didn’t see her friends. Didn’t go to Church or even watch TV.

One night I went to her room and opened the door. Emma was curled up tight, asleep. She looked peaceful to me and I wondered if maybe I was crazy, that nothing was wrong.

But then I saw the walls.

All the posters of that boy band she liked were gone, little shreds of them still stuck with tape to the walls. Photos of me and Jack and her mother turned over on her dresser. All the old stuffed animals she’d put in the closet a couple years ago were out now, lined along the sides of her bed.

I knew then. I was missing something bad.

***

Next day I kept her home from school. We sat around the kitchen table. Me staring into my cup of coffee, unable look her in the eye.

Then I started to to ask questions.

The answers were slow to come, but when they did, tears came with them.

She begged me not to tell. Said it was her fault. That she wasn’t right with God. And all the while, I sat there, ready to kill. Shocked.

“I wish mom was here,” she said.

I reached over. Took her hand in mine. “I do too.”

***

Yesterday, after I drove Emma and Jack into Omaha and put them on a plane to my brother, I called Kirby and asked if he could help me with some work. Told him I was finally ready to get some of my wife’s things out of the house.

He said he was happy to help.

Kirby Westin’s been in my life going on around twenty years. I can remember the first time I saw him. Short kid in glasses wearing a white dress shirt with a cross hung by a leather strap across his chest. Thought to myself he was asking for an ass-kicking.

Miracle he didn’t get one. Somehow he fell in with me and my friends. He was all right. Mostly normal. But sometimes when we’d be drinking beers in the back of my daddy’s pickup he’d start going on about his favorite stories from the Bible and we’d have to tell him to hush. Like I said. Mostly normal.

He pulled up around noon.

I waved. Put down my beer. Stood up on the porch. We started walking towards the barn.

He was smiling. “Gotta say, Frank, I think it’s good you’re finally moving on.”

“Bout time we all do,” I said.

The doors of the barn were open and we walked in together. I stood back while he walked to the piles of boxes I’d laid out. He lifted one. Said, “Doesn’t feel like there’s much in here.”

I smiled. Turned. Went to the corner and reached under the tarp spread over the workbench.

Don’t think the bastard even saw me pick it up.

I ran to him quick and put the axe in his skull as hard as I could.

Kirby fell on his knees. Like he was praying. Right then I remembered that kid in glasses telling his favorite Bible stories. How I’d worried about him. But then I remembered him telling those same stories to my kids in Sunday School. How he was mostly normal. How I’d trusted him all those times he asked if Emma could stay late Sunday and help clean up.

I brought the axe down again. Into the base of his neck. Deeper this time. And when I dug it out I swung again.

I hacked at Kirby ’til I couldn’t feel anything. When I was done, I wrapped him in a tarp and drove him out to a far corner of my field, to the hole I’d dug the night before.

As I lifted him out of the truck bed, I thought that with some luck, Emma might believe me. I’d promised her I wouldn’t hurt him. That we were only going to talk. I supposed she might believe Kirby’d gotten scared and run off.

I prayed she’d believe it. Promised I’d make it up to her.

I started to bury Kirby, thinking all along, while I threw that cold black earth down on him, about my children. About them down with my brother in Tennessee and how, now that they were gone, I didn’t think I could bear to bring them back to this. But then I thought better of it. In the bed of the truck, I had a ten gallon of gas.

Down in the hole, I doused Kirby with the diesel fuel just the way I was taught.

Like my daddy said, when something that bad comes around, it has to be burned.

Bio:  Paul J. Garth is the writer of numerous short stories. Others can be found at Shotgun Honey and in the forthcoming collection, “Badlands: Trouble in the Heartland”. He is perpetually in transit between Nebraska and Texas and can be found online by following @pauljgarth

The Guest by Aidan Thorn

It had been a wonderful day, Angela thought as she looked through her wedding album. She’d lost count of the number of times she’d leafed through its pages since collecting it just a couple of hours before. She had studied every outfit and smiling face that had been part of her and Richard’s special day.

She stopped on a group photo. It showed Richard and her in the centre of their guests. It was her favourite, everybody they loved in the same shot.

Something caught her eye, something she hadn’t spotted on any of the previous looks through. Over her mother’s left shoulder stood a dark shadow-like figure. It was the wrong size and far too dark to be her own shadow. No light penetrated the shape and it partially blocked Richard’s friend, Carole, who had been stood just beside Angela’s mum.

She blamed herself, she’d insisted on traditional photography rather than digital – she just felt it produced a warmer, more honest finish. Clearly there had been a problem in development or perhaps a fault on the film. Why hadn’t she spotted this before? She gently rubbed at the image but the dark shape was definitely part of the image rather than something that had spilled on the photo. It must have been there before, she thought, and turned the page. She now inspected each photo more closely than on previous viewings.

Angela was interrupted by a knock at the front door. Two female police officers greeted her, their solemn expressions told Angela something bad had happened.

‘Is it Richard?’ she asked.

‘Mrs Giles, I’m PC Franklyn and this is PC Brown, can we come in?’ one of the officers said.

Angela still hadn’t got used to her married name. Usually she felt a glow of excitement when somebody used it. Today it filled here with dread as it seemed to confirm that they were there looking for Richard Giles’ next of kin. She gestured the officers into the house.

In the living room PC Franklyn spoke, ‘Mrs Giles, I regret to have to tell you that a woman matching your mother’s description was hit by a car this morning.” There was a pause, then, “I’m sorry, but she was pronounced dead at the scene.’

Angela went numb, her emotions confused. Her mother? She’d been preparing for news of Richard’s death – not this. There was an element of relief and then an overwhelming feeling of guilt and grief. She dropped to her knees and began to sob. PC Brown bent to comfort her. There was no hug just a hand to the shoulder – the reassuring touch of human contact.

‘We’re going to need someone to come and formally identify the body,’ the crouching officer said once Angela’s sobs subsided. ‘Is that something you feel you can do?’

Angela nodded. ‘What happened?’ she asked in a voice broken with disbelief.

PC Brown looked at her colleague. A nod of approval came from above.

‘We have witness statements from the driver of the car and neighbours who saw the incident. They say she ran from her house yelling and then threw herself under a car. There was no way the driver could have reacted in time. It looks like suicide.’

‘Suicide?’ Angela questioned bemused. ‘No way, she was a happy woman. No… hang on a minute. Did you just say she ran?’

‘Yes, she ran out in front of the vehicle.’

Angela was filled with hope – this had to be a mistake. She moved over to the open wedding album on the coffee table and pointed at the group photo.

‘Well, then it’s not my mother,’ Angela said, a glimmer of optimism in her voice.

Both officers leaned over to look at the woman Angela was pointing at. She was standing proudly next to her daughter both hands clutching a walking frame. They looked at each other, both clearly confused.

‘Mrs Giles, I’m afraid we’re only looking for a formal identification from you. We’re almost certain the deceased is your mother, the neighbours have confirmed as much. The lady ran from your mother’s home, the door was left open and there is no one else left inside,’ said PC Franklyn.

‘But look! She’s used that frame for the last four years,’ Angela exclaimed.

As she stared at the photo her expression changed, the hope gone, replaced by confusion. The dark shape behind her mother had disappeared. She flipped to the next page, and then the next, a photo of Richard and herself alone under a tree. Except now they weren’t alone.

‘Mrs Giles, are you OK?’ Officer Franklyn asked.

Angela appeared not to hear. She let out a primal scream and with superhuman strength pushed past both officers, knocking them to the floor. The officers scrambled to their feet and gave chase as Angela raced out of the room and up the two flights of stairs in her marital townhouse. She appeared to fly as she took the stairs. The officers arrived in an empty bedroom, its window smashed. Angela’s lifeless body laid two stories below.

‘What the fuck was that?’ PC Brown asked.

PC Franklyn looked at her colleague, fear etched deep across her face.

‘Sue, Sue, snap out of it, we have to call this in,’ PC Brown shouted.

Franklyn pointed over Brown’s shoulder. She turned tentatively to see both of them reflected in a floor standing mirror.

‘What is it?’ Brown asked.

‘You don’t see it?’ Franklyn finally spoke.

A dark shadow enveloped Brown’s reflection.

 

Bio: Aidan Thorn is from Southampton, England, home of the Spitfire and Matthew Le Tissier but sadly more famous for Craig David and being the place the Titanic left from before sinking. Aidan would like to put Southampton on the map for something more than bad R ‘n’ B and sinking ships. His short fiction has appeared in the Byker Books Radgepacket series and the Near to the Knuckle Anthology: Gloves off, as well as online at Thrillers, Killers ‘n’ Chillers, Thrills, Kills and Chaos, Shotgun Honey and Near to the Knuckle. In Spring 2014 his story ‘Taking out the Trash’ will appear in Exiles: An Outsiders Anthology from BlackWitch Press. He released his first short story collection, Criminal Thoughts in December 2013.

Anything You Want by Phillip Thompson

I’d never killed a woman before, but the more Cindy talked, the more inclined I was to change my position. The only thing I wanted to hear come out of her mouth had to do with a pile of money, not some bullshit about gun control. As far as I was concerned, I had the gun pointed at her face under control. So I was in no mood for this shit. Especially after I just watched her fuck some guy who was definitely not Lee.

I knew something was up as soon as I pulled into the driveway and saw a Chevy instead of Lee’s F-150. I eased around to the back of the house, and sure enough, I could hear them going at it. I peeked in the bedroom window to see some construction worker-looking guy with Cindy’s legs over his shoulders, pounding away while she squirmed and squealed.

I met him in the hall, didn’t say a word, just slugged him upside the head with the butt of the .45 before he realized what was going on. He went down hard, cussing and grabbing his ear as he collapsed against the wall.

I kicked him in the gut, then stomped on the hand he was using for balance. He went down again, and I kicked him in the back of the head. I drew down on him, told him to get the fuck out. He whimpered, pushed himself up in a pile, stumbled out the door. Cindy was dressed by this time, and standing in the middle of the living room, chattering like a myna bird — scared and a little high.

“Cindy, shut up and sit the fuck down,” I said over the top of my .45. She did, collapsing like she was a balloon that had suddenly lost all of its air. Her brown hair fell around her face. Glassy, hyper eyes. Hands clutching the couch cushion on either side of her, showing off her rack in a tight white T-shirt with “BAMA” stretched across the front. The rack was how I knew she hadn’t been hitting the meth for long. She still looked healthy.

I kept the gun on her. She didn’t move.

“I’m not going to tell you again.” She nodded, finally silent. “Where is Lee?”

“Work.”

“Bullshit. He ain’t there.”

“Then I don’t know.”

“Bullshit. I think you do.”

Her eyes shot back and forth, like a trapped squirrel. I sat in the chair across from the couch, pistol balanced on my knee. “Cindy, here’s the deal. Lee has pissed off some dangerous folks and he owes them a lot of money, but you probably already know that, right?”

She nodded, guilt all over her face.

“OK. Now, I’m down here to make it right. You know me and Lee go way back, and I can help y’all out, but I gotta get that money.”

Cindy relaxed. I knew what was coming — she was going to give up the whole operation. Fucking meth heads. Don’t care about anything but their own ass. “I know where he probably is,” she said.

“Oh, I know you do, but I ain’t finished,” I said. I really didn’t care about Lee at this point, just the twenty grand. “I don’t have a lot of time to fuck around talking to you, then talking to Lee and all that. I need that money. And I’m pretty sure you know where it is.”

She shook her head, looked at the pistol in my hand.

“OK, Cindy, why don’t you tell me where Lee is, and I’ll go ask him about it — after I tell him that while he’s out working you’re here fucking Billy the Builder?”

That got her attention. “No, God no, don’t do that. Please, Jack.”

“Why shouldn’t I? You ain’t cooperating, and Lee’s a friend of mine.”

“He’d kill me.”

“Yeah? That thought crossed my mind, too.”

She looked up at me.  “I don’t know where Lee is. I swear.”

“What about the money?”

Something moved in her eyes. “If I tell you, will you not tell Lee about … you know.”

I had to smile.

“What are you smiling at?” she said.

“I’m just wondering how bad you want to keep Lee from finding out about your boyfriend.”

“Jack, I swear, he’d kill me. I’ll do anything.”

I smiled again. She saw it and slid off the couch onto her knees. Crawled over to where I was sitting and put her hands on my knees. “Anything,” she said.

“Well, now. Get to it, girl.”

She did. Blew me like a porn star, even took off her shirt and showed off that great rack while she did it. When she finished and I’d zipped up, she said, “You know that park where the Washatubbee runs into the Kosha River?”

I nodded.

“Down the road on the ‘Tubbee side, about a mile from the end, off on the left in the woods, is a shed. It’s in there.”

I stood and holstered my pistol, stepped toward the door. “It damn well better be.”

“And you won’t tell Lee?”

I turned back toward her. She still hadn’t pulled her shirt back on. “Oh, I can’t tell Lee anything now. He’s in the trunk of his car with a bullet in his head. One of my bullets.”

Cindy fell back on the couch like she had been slapped. She reached for her shirt, as if she only just now realized she was topless. Her eyes were wild, confused. “So, why — ”

“The money, plain and simple. And the rest.”

She focused, looked up at me. She was scared, real scared, but still confused.

I have to give her credit, though. She figured it out pretty damn fast. She yanked her shirt over her head. Fluffed her hair out. “I got it, Jack. Anything you want,” she said, defeat in her voice.

I smiled again and nodded.  “Good girl,” I said and closed the door behind me.

Bio:  Phillip Thompson is a Marine Corps combat veteran, journalist, speechwriter and gun owner, among other things. His fiction includes three novels (Enemy Within, A Simple Murder and Deep Blood) and short stories published by the Veterans Writing Project’s literary journal (The Review) and The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature.