Category Archives: Fiction

Fiction

Chevy by Charlie Coleman

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Carlos Thornton Williams squired his cherry red 1966 Chevy Impala down the Henry Hudson Parkway. The trip to Manhattan served as his weekly retreat. He was a Bronx baby and the Imp was his Bronx baby. Both were totally fueled. His octane of choice was Muscatel.

Cruising the highway he reserved one eye for the road and one for the cops. It was a fiscally sound principle to find cops before they found you. You didn’t need the Wall Street Journal to tell you that. He savored the last sweet drops of Muscatel licking the rim of the bottle neck as a man crossing the desert would if reduced to the last drops in his canteen. The drive to lower Manhattan was his pilgrimage to the altar of jazz, the Village Vanguard. As he breezed through the Bronx and Manhattan he would often glance at the apartment buildings that formed the urban shrubbery. He thought about the kids his age out there. They would never ever know what they were missing. They had their rock and roll and mod clothes. They had their rebellion. But were they really cool? No. They Continue reading Chevy by Charlie Coleman →

Fiction

My Miss Universe by 2010

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Who is my Miss Universe?  I once ran product from an office in the Gnash nebula, from Gnash to markets in the systems in the north.  We were shipping dollars, packaged with engineering, collateralised by the land rights.  There was a bit of a speculative boom going on around then, but not all of it dumb stuff.  People were paying enough.

The MI was done by this bored looking gal, who let slip she was the brains.  No looker but quite interesting, hair the colour of Mars.  We gave it a go in the lunchtimes before she trotted back to her childhood sweetheart who did something boring with funds on the other side of the zone.

Well, I was being bugged by the pricing.  We were covering ourselves but boom to bust is like day and night.  The MI was a bit dreamy, does not often happen that I do that to someone; so I asked her for a full conjecture on the pricing.

I asked her out of bed, she said nothing.  I asked her later in bed.  It had been okay, nothing special except she had clung to me a little tighter and looked a little dreamier.  So I brought it up, more as something to say.  I’m sometimes at a lost when it comes to romance.  She nods and says let’s do it.  I thought this might involve more action, so I looked encouraging.  She unclasped herself; Continue reading My Miss Universe by 2010 →

Fiction

Tough Way to Order Carry-Out by B.R. Stateham

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The smell of hamburger, onions, and stale cooking oil was everywhere.  We, my partner and I, stood in the kitchen of an empty restaurant staring at him in mute silence.  Hanging out of the air duct above the fryers—one big bare ass.  Glaring white, almost glowing in a neon way, dangling like raw meat in the air above our heads.  The idiot tried to rob the till of a restaurant by taking clothes off and rubbing his body with oil so he could slide down an air duct above the deep fryer.  I thought I’d seen it all as my partner, Frank, frowned and grunted, “Tough way to order carry-out.”

But there was more.

How do you get a dead stiff out of an air duct?

Continue reading Tough Way to Order Carry-Out by B.R. Stateham →

Fiction

The Path That Does Not Stray by Christopher Ryan

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” … Nessun maggior dolore Che ricordarsi del tempo felice Nella miseria.”

(There is no greater pain than to remember a happy time when one is in misery.)

Dante Alighieri, The Inferno

Richard entered the next room as the door locked behind him. A quick assessment of his surroundings produced two noteworthy observations. First, he could see an exit across the room, and second, he was not alone. In the center of the room an older man stood hunched over a bathtub, cutting into a pale mass with a circular saw. Blood streaked the shower curtain and floor. The resonating wails of the blade and the stale reek of old meat filled the confined space like an animal trapped in too small a cage. The man looked up, stared straight at the newcomer, and turned back to his work.

Richard could feel his resolve beginning to falter, but he had to keep going. Stopping now, even if that were an option, would render meaningless everything he had endured to get this far. He had to press forward. Forgoing fear and further deliberation, he moved. Having to turn sideways in the narrow space to pass behind the man, Richard made sure to avert his eyes from whatever gruesome labors were being performed. The pitch of the saw’s scream dipped sharply as if its blade were struggling through something especially dense. Richard lunged for the door, which upon opening remained ajar. It did not slam and lock behind him, as had all of the others.

Continue reading The Path That Does Not Stray by Christopher Ryan →

Fiction

The Lad on the Knoll. Part II by Chris Pollard

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“Then how can I help you?” I asked the lad.
“Sometimes they send me to fish in the river, by the bridge.”
“So why don’t you just run away when you go there?”
“Would that it were so easy!  They have me under a powerful enchantment, so that I may only go to the river, and when my buckets of fish are full, return directly.”
“What can I do then?”
“At midnight on the full moon, come and look for me there by the bridge, and bring a horseshoe on an iron chain.  Hang it round my neck, and I will be able to escape.  And you’d best protect yourself in like manner too, or they’ll take you in my place!”

The full moon was only two days away, so the following morning I went to the ironmonger’s store, and bought two horseshoes and some iron chain, preparing the two ‘necklaces’ as the lad Angus had instructed me.

The appointed night arrived, and I made my way along the road to the bridge over the river.  There I waited in the moonlight for midnight to come around, wearing one of the horseshoes on its chain about my neck.

Sure enough, at the allotted time, Angus appeared nearby with two wooden pails and a fishing rod.  He was down on the rocky shore of a fishing pool, and he sat upon a large stone, casting his line into the water.

Continue reading The Lad on the Knoll. Part II by Chris Pollard →

Fiction

Whore House by Kevin Atherton

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The job went smooth enough, we got the jewels, and Ed didn’t even kill anybody. I’ve spent a buncha time with the freak on the problems that creates. Figured I’d get him laid as a reward, but the only way that was happenin’ was a whore. Ed’s ugly as a boil on a leper’s ass.

Frank said it was the best whore house around, but that was like sayin’ diarrhea on your cheerios would lead to a lovely morning. You know how a whore will put on an act about likin’ it and you don’t give a shit whether they do or not? These girls seemed like they’d won the lottery and gettin’ a dick rammed up their ass was all part of some carnival-like atmosphere assigned to whoredom. Frank’s always been full of shit and now he fits the image. His mouth looks just like his asshole ‘cause I knocked out his front teeth and the stitched-up lips have a nice puckery effect.

The door was dark mahogany and had etchings of women doin’ weird crap to pigs. In one they were fuckin’ ‘em and in the next, they were eatin’ ‘em. This bothered me some, but the two twits saw it as some kind of good omen —like pig sex Continue reading Whore House by Kevin Atherton →

Fiction

Blame It On The Moon by Randall Pretzer

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It was about noon. I was driving down a street they called Turnover. It had nothing but a bunch of apartments lined up on either side of the street. The parking for all of them was located in the back of the areas. I don’t know where they got these street names from, or why they called a street this or that. It didn’t make any sense or nor did it seem to matter. They should have just numbered them. It would make more sense. Well, common sense didn’t always exist in our vocabulary. It was these types of subjects that I thought about as I began my day. I was looking for a crowded street. It was not Turnover. There was not a single soul walking out on that street or nobody with a car decided to ride down it. It was just myself driving alone down this strangely deserted street. I had driven down it before and there had been people on it. Usually on a Saturday I could count a crowd but not this Saturday. There were other streets and I would find one where everyone in the world was walking down or driving along them.

I left Turnover street around 12:30 and headed towards a street downtown. There had to be crowds of people downtown along those streets and so that is where I headed. I couldn’t wait. It got so lonely at my job and I needed to be around some people. It didn’t matter if we talked or not, I just needed to be around them. I didn’t know why. I was hoping downtown would be the place where it was all at.

Continue reading Blame It On The Moon by Randall Pretzer →

Fiction

The Lad on the Knoll (Part I) by Chris Pollard

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“Help me!” the lad implored, a desperate look in his eyes.

I was quite surprised, as he had no apparent injuries and looked to be in good health.

When I awoke that morning, it had been a gorgeous summer’s day, so after a quick breakfast of fruit salad and coffee, I packed some food and a bottle of water in my knapsack, and set out for a walk in the countryside.

I had been in Scotland for a couple of weeks, making a tour of prehistoric stone circles, tumuli and such like, a perennial fascination of mine. My OS map clearly showed a couple of sites near the small town I had lodged the night in, so I set off to see if they would be interesting.

Continue reading The Lad on the Knoll (Part I) by Chris Pollard →

Fiction

Wicked Woman’s Booty by Jodi MacArthur

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Episode 3: “Sizzle Me A Pirate Stump”


“Land ho, Cap’n! Me sees the Invisible Islands!” From the crow’s nest, Big Bob pointed west. The crew looked. There was nothing.

Strudel knelt at the captain’s boots and rubbed grease on the rough leather. “How does he be doin’ that?”

Viper sat on The High Log, throne of The Wicked Woman. The treasure map stretched between his fingers. He had been staring at it for days; it was an enigma. The map’s images and words, having fallen wet during the attack on the frogslingers’ ship, blurred. At the bottom were slight waves with the word,

Caribbean

Continue reading Wicked Woman’s Booty by Jodi MacArthur →

Fiction

One-Thousand Abominations by Brian Kutanovski

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Sister would slam her head against the refrigerator door. Pepper jars, condiments and other glass items clanked with each blow. Magnets slid empathetically, scattering on the beige linoleum. She would yank her chestnut blonde curls from her monkey-sized skull and drop to her knees, gasping for another breath, choking in hysteria. During her convulsive blows of self-abuse, the expression on her face were a suspended jittering frown of terror. A sheen of saliva shined her bottom lip, dripping to the floor with each hit to the head. She didn’t know any better. Sister was special. She was deficient.

Most of the time mother would spring sister up from her merciful stance, occasionally ripping sister’s blouse from her skeletal frame and yell, “Stop! You’re too old for this.”

Other times sister would continue the self-affliction by clawing her child flesh from her undeveloped breasts down to her stomach in a maniacal frenzy. Fresh bleeding scratches adorned her tiny body, breathing so heavily, sleep would attain her tortured spirit, lying peacefully on the linoleum under the kitchen table like a dog.

The front door opened. The keys jangled in the lock. All hairs on our bodies stood up. Father was home. His charcoaled boots clunked against the wooden foyer floor.

If he sees his daughter lying underneath the table, mother would be chastised for neglect and bad mothering; punished under his law of unforgiving cruelty.

“Why is she on the floor again?” Father sternly inquired.

“I sorry. I cook you dinner, I have no time help her.” Mother replied in a broken dialect.

Continue reading One-Thousand Abominations by Brian Kutanovski →