After the third knock, Amy’s dad bursts out and lunges for me. “What have I told you about coming here?” he says, his hands gripping my jacket. “What have I fucking told you?”
“Look, I just want to know if Amy’s all right.”
“That’s none of your business any more, is it.” He pushes me down the path. “Now piss off, or I’m warning you.”
Anatol Timko was still not comfortable using a wheelchair. Several unsuccessful surgeries had not been able to correct his herniated disc. The doctor had recommended a sustained amount of time spent off his feet. Anatol had reservations about this.
The chair was making him feel claustrophobic and he didn’t like feeling dependent on his girlfriend or mother for everyday tasks. He was also having trouble sleeping. He would
My name is Cassiopeia. I am from the planet Caprica, now destroyed by evil forces. I am part of a rag-tag fleet searching for Earth, our ancient and spiritual home. I’m in unrequited love with a handsome Captain…
And now I am Princess Leia… in a queue at WH Smith. I am the last royalty of a Galaxy from long ago and far away, and I’m impatiently waiting for a Wookie to make his purchase.
The moon is full on the horizon, full and dancing along the top of every gentle wave. Three feet above the low tide mark the rug doesn’t move.
The hands of the watch glide silently over the Greek key pattern in red and gold. The time reads 10:52 am. His silent protest these seven years, but no one ever looked that close. She always made sure he wore the watch because she Continue reading The Liberation of Edward Kellor by Anthony David Jacques
Wendy was proud of her victorian-era mourning ring. Her ex fiancee had given it to her one Christmas wrapped in red tissue paper. It displayed a skull and eerily shared her own initials. A strange thing to give a loved one on a Holiday celebrating the birth of Christ, but she adored it. When they broke up a year later, he had asked her to return it knowing its value but she had adamantly refused and quit returning his phone calls. After a few months he gave up entirely. She wore it to teach her tuesday night yoga class, and to dinner every night with her vegan friends. She never took it off.
Recently she had started chatting with a man over the internet. He had so far not asked her to purchase him an airline ticket, so she was not that worried. He claimed to be a vegan, but she noticed on his Facebook page he had claimed to “like” Stubbs Barbeque sauce, and that gave her pause. Even so, she let him talk her into meeting up at a bar on 7th street. Being new to Austin, she didn’t own a car but could easily walk the few blocks required to get anywhere she needed. The night of the blind date she selected a black strapless dress and a pair of wedge heels. It was a beautiful night and Wendy sang softly to herself as she strolled toward the bar. She kept her expectations low but was looking forward to a few drinks and hopefully some good conversation.
Wendy could see a few drifters sharing a cigarette as she got closer to the restaurant.
One of them was watching her and so she held her purse a little tighter to her chest and walked a little faster. She was getting nervous and was thinking about the conversations she had shared with the man who called himself Tribang64. She wondered why she never asked his real name.
Two guys wearing plaid jackets hung back in the shadows and listened to a distant song.
The melody was familiar and a little catchy and it began to rain.
Their jackets were immaculate and the drops fell more and more heavily as they stood there.
Finally the tune stopped as abruptly as if someone had cut a wire.
The older of the men, who had a grey beard that was neatly trimmed at the edges turned to the younger one and said ‘love songs make me want to kill’.
He was six foot and well muscled.
His companion was broad and had a jaw that looked like it was set in concrete.
‘It’s bitches’ music’, he said, withdrawing a toothpick from his mouth and inspecting it. ‘They’re all the same, they want romance and a little money on the side.’
‘That’ll be right Al.’
‘What now?’
‘How bout we do what we came here for?’
‘Hank I think that’s a fine idea.’
She was sitting slumped back in a dinning room chair, a hand holding a cold compress on the back of her head. Dressed in a black skirt, black jacket and white silk blouse, with dark wine-red heels on slim. petite feet. A very expensive looking ruby necklace worth a small fortune adorned her long, perfectly chiseled neck.
She looked like old money.
Not in the sense of time or age. But old in the sense she rolled in dough. Lots of it. And had had it for years.
A mass of brown hair, curly, had been thrown over her left shoulder as she held the compress on the right side of her head. Maybe in her early thirties she was well built, trim. With an athlete’s body.
The King’s Court mobile home park was all the way out on Boulder Highway, where the outskirts of the Neon City became Henderson. Leon Diggs rounded out the park’s single digit tenant retention rate, since its greedy landlord had doubled the rent on the 200 some odd park-owned trailers.
Eddie needed to get high, real high. And Leon had the sweetest sugar shit he could afford. Eddie parked his truck next to a pristine 68 Lincoln Continental, with the suicide doors. Business must be boomin’, he thought as he got out, and rapped his knuckles hard on the side door of lot 142. Nothing.
“Leon, it’s Eddie. C’mon, man.”
Nothing. Eddie pushed on the door. It swung open, and sure as shit, he walked right into it. Blood was splattered everywhere. Cash, blow, and guns were scattered on the deck, between the bodies; everything ripe for the taking. Eddie spotted a jumbo Ziploc of powder on the floor. He snatched it, and slid two fingers inside. He touched his fingers to his nose, and took a hit. In a flash he had a powder burned red nose, and he knew it was good shit. That’s when he realized including Leon, there were four bodies; three dead, one barely breathing.
Chugir was forty years old, weary, and damaged by bad booze.
The booze problem he blamed on the Drinkards. For months, he had been stalking a Drinkard and extracting almost pure alcohol from its body.
“Almost” pure. People were saying it was Chugir’s own fault, that he pushed the Drinkard too hard, until the booze it produced came out polluted. “Bad metabolism,” they were saying. Chugir wasn’t greedy. Each day, he’d been sharing with others the clear drink which he pressed out through the Drinkard’s metal tubes.
But this particular morning, the booze made him sick and he threw up blood. The others carried him to a Fixard, the common type spotted on the grass plains, and shouted for help until one of the Fixards heard them.
PULP METAL MAGAZINE 