“What happened was… He went a-midnight kissin’. Then he went a-woo-woo-missin.’”
Mama wiped her hands on a dishtowel. She just come in from the garden.
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Tag: murder
Little Green Men by Jason Abshire
Young Toche, “the bird,” slight of stature and weighing no more than a bundle of palm leaves, was forever a dreamer. In his tiny village, deep in the jungles in Colombia, time moves slowly. He lived the life of his ancestors. Dinner came at the end of a spear, and fire and a thatch roof were luxuries. Modernity was yet to invade.
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Andytown by David Louden
Tonight, a strong man died in Belfast.
We had been on the site for three days. Day one, up went the big tent. The rigging, lights, safety nets and everything else that goes into putting on ‘the show’. Day two, the dress rehearsal and an opportunity for those of us who needed it, to get clean. A chance for those of us who needed it, to score. Day three was opening night. We were set up on the outskirts of Andersonstown. Out of the way, on a plot of land that had been raised to the ground under the promise of social philanthropy only for the plans to cool and the memories to fade. Now it’s little more than uneven concrete and free parking. That’s how Mal got it for the week for so cheap. It should have been a risk this far out, but people are the same everywhere. You put enough curiosities in one place and they’ll come out of wherever they’re held up to look at them.
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After Lloyd by Christopher J. Ananias
Disturbing content – see tags at the bottom of the page.
Gil doesn’t talk, just sits there drawing demons. Mr. Ny clapped his erasers together and called Gil to the blackboard for one of his impossible Geometry theorems. Gil snatched up the chalk, like a pissed-off Picasso, and made quick hard chalk-chalk marks, and it was solved. The last bell rang and the mad dash.
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Slither by Ed N. White
This is a crime scene. I shouldn’t be here; I’m not a cop anymore. So, I ducked under the yellow tape strung across the two trellis supports and picked the lock. Dusting residue coated surfaces in suspect locations; someone had cut two patches from the cheap gray rug. A ceiling fan with a squeaky bearing rotated slowly, which helped me breathe because the smell of death hung like diesel exhaust.
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Baby Blues by Jack Powers
Cass had been on the Cold Case Time Travel squad eight years when I replaced her partner, Hoss. We’d done things differently in Present-Day Homicide so I shut up and listened. Cass was a pro, by the book mostly–she could even fix the damn machine! And since no other towns could afford the traveler fees, we’d be in ’60s Harlem one day and ’30s Greenwich the next. I’m guessing they brought me in for the Harlem cases. Brothers don’t tend to open up to two pale folks from the future. Of course, they weren’t supposed to know we were from the future, but occasionally our Era Lingo implants malfunctioned.
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The Horrible Relocation by Marco & Liam Etheridge
A cross-country move is a big change, I get that, but no way I deserve this nightmare I’ve landed in. The relocation wasn’t even my idea. Doctor’s orders, right? The doc said I needed a drier climate and less stress. And the move did lower my stress level, at least initially. Putting three thousand miles between me and the cops, that’s a hidden bonus. Needless to say, I didn’t mention that to the good doctor.
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Personal Growth by Ben Fitton
The hole was definitely growing.
Jonty could tell, having just woken from a nap, face tingling with grass imprints and a half-crushed flailing ladybird stuck on his eyelashes, to find the hole bigger and nearer.
Jonty was seen as a shabby, acceptable kind of aristo who loitered in gardens on dewy mornings, drunk or whimsical, misquoting Homer and asking for a crustless sandwich while he sat, as squat as a stone rounded by a forgiving sea, marvelling at the stains on his tie.
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Why Is Jake Always So Lucky? by Paul Crehan
As a kid, he was the one who found nickels, dimes, and quarters on the sidewalk, got two candy bars to fall into the well of the vending machine when he had only paid for one, and succeeded where so many others had failed in bashing open the piñata. Two or three times, when he wasn’t ready for a test, the teacher wouldn’t show up. Test cancelled. Stuff like that. His whole life.
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Spite by Alex Sinclair
The congregation came to him in the merest tendrils of the dawn’s earliest and sickest light, the sky’s face the same faded blue of an overdose.
They came to him like faces in a fever dream, seeking answers as they always did. The preacher didn’t have them. He was looking for answers of his own. He was dope-sick after all, the slow crawl of heroin fidgeting in his collapsing veins as it made its retreat, making the marrow of his bones ache. His body was already begging for more liquid forgiveness, and there was the other issue that he needed to attend to, the issue that made his need all the more desperate, the issue that had marooned the preacher in the sleepless raft of his stiff bed with nothing but his anxious thoughts to sustain him.
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