Vancouver 1949
There’s a direction a city takes when kids go missing. The virtues of due process are quickly abandoned, and the closet vigilantes come out. Suddenly, everyone has an opinion and a plan.
Supposition becomes fact. The police become worthless stooges, in league with the perversions of dark and faceless perpetrators. Rights and freedoms become the sole domain of the self-anointed, raging against the printed word that breaks the news.
He picked up the phone and dialled. He thought that there would be no answers, no advice, just someone to listen. He wasn’t sure if that was what he wanted.
“Samaritans, you are talking to Sarah….”
He took a breath. He lifted the whisky and sipped.
Continue reading “Why Can’t She See The Difference by Hugh Cron – Adult Content”
That was a person, right? That was a man.
Minka’s knee is already way too close to the steering wheel as she brakes hard. The car stops just short of a short tree. She knows that tree. Coca.
Shit.
She looks forward, not into the rear-view, because behind her is the curve. There’s no seeing around curves.
She hears thumping, dull, rhythmic. It’s her right hand smacking the map next to her, again-again, crinkling all of Colombia down into the seat cushion.
Shit.
Continue reading “You Don’t Say No to Ituango by Amanda McTigue”
The air in Detective Dane Lloyd’s former office hung warm and heavy, like something already used. He glanced at the broken air-conditioner near the tiled ceiling and sighed. His headache was half from the heat and half the beer from last night’s celebrations. His own retirement party for crying out loud, but here he was again, all hands on deck since they called him in at five a.m.
I had this to consider as I fell: that to be pushed from the eleventh floor of a slum hotel, in the end, isn’t so different from being pushed from the eleventh floor of the Ritz-Carlton. The outcomes would differ very little.
*
The pain was indescribable. First had been shock and horror then disbelief and now all that was left was pain.
“Mr. Peta. A broad’s waitin’ for ya.”
“The red dress with blonde hair? Yea? Did you offer her somethin’ to drink? I got a feeling she’s gonna need it.”
I acted surprised when I saw her. The news coverage pretty much summed up what the meeting would be about. Socialite inherited fortune after bloody breakfast accident.
“Hello Mr. Peta.”
“It’s Mr. Peter.”
“The secretary-”
“She can’t speak. What can I do you for?”
I sat down and shoved old newspapers with half-finished crossword puzzles to the side. I didn’t want her to know I couldn’t finish what I had started. I offered her a glass of bourbon smokier than a factory working ballet dancer.
Alfie.
Jean walked over to the carry-cot.
“Ugly wee bastard, isn’t it?”
Graham began to laugh, “That’s whit you get when you shouldn’t have weans.”
She stared into the cot, the kid was sleeping.
“Do you mean about Kylie being a lesbo?”
“Aye. Why did she get herself pregnant, I take it wis fur the money?”
Jean pulled the shawl over the kid.
“Naw! Did she no tell ye?”
Continue reading “Alfie by Hugh Cron – Adult Content. This may be unsettling for some readers.”
For Jonas Ericsson, a junior prosecutor with the Swedish Prosecution Authority, the story began in Stockholm on Valentines Day, 2012, and ended a week later in New Orleans, USA, on the twenty-first day of February.
Fat Tuesday.
At short notice Ericsson asked his secretary to cancel a number of upcoming appointments. He then booked two weeks leave.
Five days later he landed in the United States.
The day before Mardi Gras.
Inspector Steven Young looked around the incident room. The pictures of eleven male children stared back at him. He felt so much remorse. He blamed himself for ten of their deaths. If only he had caught him after the first.
Continue reading “Reasons Don’t Matter By Hugh Cron – Adult Content”
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