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Marko brought the catcher around the side of the house to where the lawn bag stood under the open window. He shook out the clippings, covering up the duffel bag that had been dropped into the bottom. He bundled the top, felt its weight, and brought it around front by the garage. He rang the doorbell twice and waited. He hit it once more. He lingered on the front step a moment, then gathered up the bag and set it in the bed of the truck. He harnessed the mower and locked the trailer gate.
Marko scanned the neighborhood as he turned the ignition. The street was wide, and only eight houses in view, all on one-acre lots. Horses stood quietly in the yard of the corner house, glancing now and then towards the main road. There were no neighbors out. In fact, Marko couldn’t remember ever seeing anyone in the yards or the driveways. The turquoise ranch directly across the street might have been vacant or owned by shut-ins. A white Jeep always stood in the driveway of the neighboring farmhouse, but no one ever came out to drive it. A green Ford that he didn't recognize was parked at the far end of the street, but no one was in it. Nothing to attract any cop who didn’t get called there. The only thing that felt out of place was Marko’s pickup truck and its trailer, half-filled with landscaping equipment. No one on the street would have been likely to hire out their lawnmowing, including the house he sat in front of, a white-and-blue ranch with cracked gutters and overgrown boxwoods blocking the front window. The neighbors might have thought that the old man’s nephew, who came by on occasion, had decided he had better keep the yard from becoming overgrown if he wanted to make any money selling it when the old man died. So Marko never did any more than he had to—no weeding, no trimming bushes, no edging. He worked haphazardly with the weedwhacker. The whole yard took seven or eight minutes. That’s all the old man needed to drop the duffel out the window into the lawn bag anyways. Today the duffel was heavier. By a few pounds, at least. Duffy hadn’t said there was going to be more, but Marko had felt it when he lifted the bag. Normally Duffy would have said something. He would have given some sort of slick explanation, like college was back in session in Laramie and the kids needed supplies, or the stock market was down and the lawyers and doctors downtown were stressed out of their heads, asking for tons of product. Or there were fires and people couldn’t drive down to Fort Collins to get it. But the bag felt even heavier than it had those times. His second phone vibrated on the seat beside him. He picked it up. It was Duffy. “You’re done?” “I just finished.” “A cut only?” “Yes. A lot of clippings. A lot to bring back.” “What do you mean a lot?” “I mean it’s a heavy bag.” “How heavy?” “Two, three times as much.” Duffy was silent. “That’s not what you expected?” “No. Herschel dropped it off a half an hour ago. Same size as usual.” “Let me take a look,” Marko said. Marko put down the phone, got out and walked to the back of the truck. He found the lawn bag and turned it on its side and started to sweep out the clippings with his arm. He pulled the duffel bag out of the bottom and unzipped it. It contained two old phonebooks. Marko returned to the truck’s cab, pulled his Glock 47 out of the glove compartment, and tucked the gun into his waistband before walking towards the house. Nothing moved in the windows. He didn’t ring the bell. He jammed open the door and stuck the nose of the gun into the dim living room. He was struck by a stale smell. As his eyes adjusted he saw a body lying crumpled on the floor in the living room. Marko had not seen the old man more than a few times, but he recognized the man. He looked over the ragged, lifeless features: the bony nose, the recessed cheekbones, the hollow at the chin. Before he could approach, a sharp squeak broke the silence of the house. He moved through the kitchen towards it. A lanky figure with something under his arm crashed through the storm door towards the old man’s Buick in the carport. Marko stretched for the window above the kitchen sink. He heard the stuttering burst of the engine just as the glass shattered and bullet holes appeared on the windshield. The car was running but didn’t budge an inch. Marko slipped out the storm door, with the gun trained on the driver’s seat, but no one moved in the car. He opened the passenger side door and pulled out a brown paper shopping bag that sat in the seat next to the man, now dead. Marko didn’t look at him for long, just long enough to see the nose, the cheeks, the little hollow—an unmistakable family resemblance to the man laying in the living room. Marko stepped back. No breeze disturbed the quiet of the street. He checked the brown paper bag and tucked it under his arm to try to cover the blood spatter. He walked down the driveway. The horses were still ambling about near the corner. The green Ford stood empty—perhaps ownerless—at the other end of the street. Before he got to the truck an elderly neighbor came out onto the porch of her ramshackle bungalow. She eyed Marko and made a gesture of disgusted confusion. He got in and again broke the silence with the roar of his truck's engine. © 2026 J.P. Gallagher About the author: J.P. Gallagher is a short-story writer living in the Denver area. His work draws on the landscapes and traditions of the American West to tell contemporary, hard-boiled crime stories.
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“Here, Detective, take this rose home to your wife,” said Baxter.
“I don’t make it a habit to accept anything from serial killers.” “The only thing I kill–serially, as you put it–is bugs. This is from my prize roses.” “No, thank you. Tell me again, where were you on Friday night?” “What time exactly?” “Between the hours of 8 and 10pm.” “I was right here. All day, in fact.” “Why did you ask what time then?” “Sorry, I was focused on my flowers. Why are you asking?” “Your friend, Daniel, is missing.” “I wouldn’t call him a friend, really.” “Why is that? Did you two have a falling out?” “You could say that.” “What about?” “He grows roses as well, but you probably already know that.” “Yeah.” “And you probably already know that he stole a hybrid tea I was growing.” “Tell me more.” “It’s a special hybrid I grew, a cross of the Blue Moon and the Mr. Lincoln.” “Blue Moon and Mr. Lincoln?” “Yes, names of hybrid tea roses, Detective. You know, you and I are not all that different.” “We are very different.” “No, no, we’re the same. You and I are both experts at what we do. You are an expert investigator. So am I.” “An expert investigator?” “Yes. All roses are subject to predators like bugs or disease. Beetles are the serial killers of roses. So is mildew and other diseases. Anything can take out a rose.” “Quite the philosopher, aren’t you?” “Anyway, each prize rose is given a name. The Blue Moon is a lavender rose, and the Mr. Lincoln is a red rose, both very fragrant. I was going to call mine the Blue Lincoln. Your wife will love it.” “I’ll buy one at a florist.” “You could, but wouldn’t you rather get it straight from the inventor?” “In my book, God is the inventor.” “I guess you could call me a god. I would not take offense.” “I know you had something to do with Daniel’s disappearance.” “Daniel had a habit of disappearing without any help from anyone, including me.” “I haven’t heard that.” “Ask his wife.” “He was divorced.” “His ex-wife then. I didn’t know he got divorced. A man can die a thousand deaths from a divorce.” “Spare me the philosophy lesson.” “Know what the secret to a good marriage is?” “You’re going to tell me the secret to a good marriage?” “Bring her a rose every day. My wife never tired of it.” “Your wife died under mysterious circumstances.” “It’s not mysterious at all. I have poisons here for the bugs. She handled that part and got it in her system. I really should sue the manufacturer.” “Why haven’t you?” “I’m still in mourning.” “Daniel and your wife were having an affair.” “Apparently he had a secret with roses as well as women.” “What was his secret?” “He never told me. I tried to get it out of him.” “What is your secret?” “To women? I thought it was roses. To roses? Simple, really, and it’s crack for them. They crave it.” “What is it?” “Bone meal.” © 2026 Ed Ridgley About the author: Ed Ridgley (https://linktr.ee/edridgley) won a New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest in 2010, the cartoon showing a bar scene with a bartender, a detective, and a ballerina. His caption (the bartender’s words) said “The guy you’re looking for waltzed out of here an hour ago.” And he won the Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine’s Mysterious Photograph Contest, July/August 2023 edition. Ed hiked to Everest Base Camp in Nepal in 2018 and thus crossed off number one on his bucket list. “I swear, bitch, if you did something to him, I’m out of here!”
“He was like that when I come out here to make coffee,” Stephanie said. “Swear on a bible.” John Lyndhurst lay on a couch with faded nap, a rictus grin on his face. A lifelong smoker, his face was crisscrossed with wrinkles, tiny fissures that captured shadows. A noisy man in life, his repose in death was unnerving. “He dead?” “Has to be.” The man hadn’t moved since Stephanie called her friend Patti over, a fifteen-minute drive. From time to time, she nudged his shoe with her foot to be sure. “Why the holy hell didn’t you call nine-one-one?” “I’m thinking about it.” “Well, hell, you want me to do it?” She reached in her purse for her cell phone. “Hang on,” Stephanie said, placing a hand on Patti’s phone before she could unlock it. “I’m thinking we can turn this into some good luck for us.” “How?” “Grab his legs,” Stephanie ordered. “I’ve got his bank book.” “Hang on,” Patti said. “What’s my cut?” “Twenty-five percent.” “Fifty.” “Thirty.” “Forty-five.” “Forty.” “Done,” Patti said. Stephanie moved the coffee table, sending Styrofoam cups, a gin bottle, beer cans, and pill bottles scattering across the hardwood floor. She rolled him off the couch by tugging his shoulders. Patti lost her hold three times before they got him propped in the car. “Let me catch my breath,” Patti said, holding the steering wheel like a lifeline. “Cut out the smokes, bitch, and you’ll have air.” Patti ignored her. “How much . . . are . . . you—we asking to withdraw?” “I’m going for five.” “That all?” The check with its forged signature was sucked into the tube system with its pneumatic whoosh in the plastic carrier. Patti continued her playacting, fluffing his collar while her knuckles whitened from the effort to keep John’s head stable. The transaction was taking too long. Patti’s fingers ached from the tension of holding John’s head steady, without making it look like she was trying to strangle the passenger in front of her. When the teller asked John twice if he wanted large denomination bills, she immediately tried to make her right hand prop his jaw playfully. Tunnel vision whisked away every other sense; she didn’t hear the teller or Stephanie speaking words, but the sound of fear got through. “Mister Lyndhurst, did you sign this check? Sir? Sir?” Stephanie couldn’t take another second of the tension; she hit the gas, burning rubber out of the parking lot. They drove aimlessly. “It’s your goddamn fault,” she blurted, breaking the silence. Patti leaned over the seat. John’s body, now canted at an unnatural angle into the foot well, seemed bent in half. She yanked up his shirt to move him and noted blood pooling in his lower back and buttocks. “My fault?” “You were massaging his head off his neck back there! She got suspicious!” That started a screaming match that resulted in a litany of filth and profanities ringing around the hunched man, oblivious to the world. They were on Lake Road going west, at the same spot where highway construction had widened the road, owing to subsidence. The yellow guard rail on John’s side of the vehicle had been removed, replaced by concrete bollards at the lip of the sandstone cliffs overlooking Lake Erie. Driving put Stephanie at a disadvantage. Her anger boiling over, she reached around to slap Patti’s face and lost control of the vehicle. She overcorrected without taking her foot off the gas. The car slewed from one side of the road to the other and back again, whiplashing them both, dislodging Patti from her perch in back. The car shot over the side without any time for Stephanie to brake. Inertia threw seatbeltless Patti upward against the roof. Not as airborne as her partner, Stephanie tried to use that moment of weightlessness to regain control of the car. Gravity, however, overruled everything and took full control. The car plunged over the dense canopy of stunted trees clinging to the side of the cliff face, skidding along the treetops for what seemed an eternity. A flash of the lake’s blue expanse was recorded in the eyes and neocortexes of the living passengers. They both lay unconscious, silent, bleeding from deep lacerations, matching their passenger in stillness. * * * The women were saved by turkey buzzards, the last guests to answer the dinner bell. Their spiraling circle over the car grew by dozens until an amateur photographer stopped to take a photo of the revolving cone of large-winged birds circling the shoreline. While he increased the shutter speed of his expensive camera to get the right blur for the bokeh effect he wanted, a spear of sunlight glinting from below through the trees startled him. A car aerial. The paramedics who brought them up rushed Patti into intensive care immediately. Half her face had turned septic and the skin had to be removed down to the subcutaneous layer. Maggots had burrowed into the wound and eaten enough dead flesh to save her life. Reconstructive surgery paid for by a GoFundMe project while she served her time in the women’s prison in Marysville. She left Northtown and rumor said she wound up on Kensington Avenue, Philadelphia’s notorious neighborhood for streets packed with dope-fiends bent over in their fentanyl and xylazine nods. Stephanie, being the “mastermind of the fraud perpetrated on an aging man,” to quote the prosecutor, received a five-year sentence in the Trumbull Correctional Institute. She became a devout Christian inside and a recluse after her release for good behavior during her third year. When she heart gave out, at 47, six firemen had to cut a hole through the wall to extract her body. Her weight was estimated at eight hundred pounds. Neither woman ever spoke to the other after their rescue. © 2026 Robb T. White About the author: Robb White lives in Northeastern Ohio. A Derringer-nominated author, he has three series detectives: Thomas Haftmann, Raimo Jarvi, and Jade Hui. Fade to Black is a collection of noir tales, and Jersey Girl is his latest thriller. A forthcoming crime novella is Easy Money from Brick Tower Press. “You don’t mind?” Greg asked.
“Not at all.” “It’s just that I gotta make sure someone’ll cover me at work—” “I get it.” “—and making the drive up there for the service. Plus, you were always good with words.” “It’s no problem.” “Thanks, Dan… Strange, isn’t it? Him dying like that, I mean.” “Yeah,” he said. “Goes to show you never really know a person.” That night, Dan Walker sat in his home office and stared at his keyboard as if it was a hypnotist’s watch. Minutes passed. Words didn’t. He knew exactly who his father was, how the man died, and so on, but the ways and means of condensing the old man’s life, and death, into a paragraph or two eluded him. However, at a minute past ten, after he’d spent the better part of an hour at the mercy of his laptop, he told himself to just state the facts. “Treat it like a report,” he said. “Say exactly what happened.” He typed… Jerome Wilker, 71, died on October 15, 202-- He stopped. He deleted it. He typed… Jerome Wilker, 71, loving father-- Delete. His hands hovered above the keyboard like spirits. “Say exactly what happened.” He laughed, then told himself, “Why the hell not?” On Saturday night, a complete bastard named Jerome Walker pressed a .44 Magnum against his temple while he lay in bed and shot himself. At least, that’s how it was intended to look. Words, then, poured like whiskey. It was easy to kill him, especially when you take into account the son of a bitch drank himself into a blackout every evening for the past fifty years. It also helped that he was an outdoorsman with a shit-ton of handguns and rifles lying around the house, some of which were always loaded (like him). It also doesn’t hurt that I’m the county sheriff with a key to his house. He typed faster. It was so simple, I still can’t believe I got away with it. I dropped by his farmhouse at five that afternoon. “Wanna shoot?” I asked. He was drunk already, but said, “Sure,” and we went out back, put some empty beer bottles on the fence, and squeezed off a few rounds, him with his .38, me with my 9mm. We did it for about an hour, then I told him good night, lied and said I loved him, and left. A little ways down the road, I pulled to the side, parked, snuck back, and hung around outside, peeking through the windows every so often. The jackass could never keep a curtain closed if his life depended on it. Which it did. Haha. It didn’t take long for him to stumble to bed and pass out. I crept in, took the .44 from his dresser, and blew his brains out. Easy peasy. It certainly looked like a suicide. No note, but that doesn’t mean anything. Most suicides don’t have them, at least from my experience. Also, when they ran the gunshot residue test, there was plenty of gunpowder on his hand, so there was nothing suspicious. Then it was off to the crematorium. Once more with feeling: easy peasy. The hardest part was waiting. Not outside, no. I mean, waiting most my life to give him what he deserved. All those years, all those beatings, me, Greg, and Mom endured. Every bruised chin and black eye. To be fair, he did teach me a valuable lesson. He took me hunting once and told me, “When you hunt, the most important thing you’ll carry is patience.” Fuckin’ A, Dad. He smirked. Jerome worked at Fathom Steel until he retired at 49. Of course, he retired at such a young age because Mom dropped dead of a heart attack that same year and he got a hefty life insurance payout. His is survived by two sons, Greg, who moved to Knoxville to work for a tech startup as soon as he turned 18 to get away from the old man, and Dan, who joined the army at 18, came back at 30, joined the Sheriff’s Department, worked his way up through the ranks, and bided his time until the perfect moment. He was preceded in death by billions of better people. He will not be missed. Thanks again for the lesson, Dad, and the house. Can’t wait to sell it. Or burn it down. He stopped. He deleted everything. After a short eternity, he typed… Jerome Wilker, 71, passed away Saturday, November 15. Cremation has already taken place. Jerome worked as a foreman at Fathom Steel. In his free time he loved hunting and shooting. He was preceded in death by his wife Shirley and is survived by sons Greg and Dan. He will be missed. Dan hit save and emailed it to his brother. He stopped himself from throwing his laptop against the wall and went to bed. “This looks good.” “It’s not too short?” “No, he wouldn’t want it too wordy anyway. You know how he was,” Greg said. “You send it to the newspaper?” “Not yet. I wanted you to take a look first. I’ll send it now.” “Gotcha. Well, I’ll let you go. I’ll be landing in Detroit Metro at eight. You still picking me up?” “Absolutely.” They said goodbye, and hung up. That night, at home by himself, Dan poured himself a glass of Jack Daniels and like his father (like himself), didn’t stop until he was completely drunk and started to roam his house like a vagrant. He still wasn’t used to being alone in the house since Suzanne left with the kids the week before. Hours later, just before the sun rose on the day of his father’s memorial service, he stood in the doorway of his home office and eyed the laptop. “Why the hell not?” He didn’t stop himself that time. © 2025 Mike McHone About the author: Mike McHone's fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Dark Yonder, Mystery Tribune, Rock and a Hard Place, the Anthony Award-nominated anthology Under the Thumb: Stories of Police Oppression, Edited by SA Cosby, and elsewhere. A former journalist, his articles, op-eds, and humor pieces have appeared in the Detroit News, the AV Club, Playboy, and numerous other outlets. He is the 2020 recipient of the Mystery Writers of America’s Hugh Holton Award and has placed twice on Ellery Queen’s Annual Readers List. He lives in Detroit. I never liked Patsy Renzi. Always thought he was sleaze. But I had to put up with him through most of my youth. He was a friend of my uncle Santo and owned a hole-in-the-wall appliance store down the street from Santo’s Texaco station. The gas station sat on a large corner plot and did a good business while the appliance store languished just short of the dead end, so I rarely saw anybody buy even a toaster, much less a washing machine from Patsy. I liked to call him “pasty” since he was a light-skinned Italian, not swarthy like the rest of us. But Patsy, like my uncle, was connected with numbers racketeers and thieves. So, periodically, inventory got moved in and out. Still, Patsy never seemed to have any money, never seemed capable of anything more than bullshitting his way through life and asking Uncle Santo to bail him out of one mess or another.
When I was twelve, I started working weekends and school vacations pumping Texaco hi-test, changing oil, and answering the payphone when that total nutcase, Chickenhead, called in with racetrack bets and numbers. After I got my license, I’d make the occasional rounds to pick up betting slips at mom-and-pop stores and diners and such. But when I went to college, Uncle Santo told me to leave all that behind, to become something, someone he never could have become. I gave it a shot. Then LBJ escalated the war, and I got diverted. A few years later, I returned home, returned to college. I fell in love. Man, did I fall. Got engaged. Set the date. New Year’s Eve. On a Sunday afternoon, I took my fiancée, Mila, to Uncle Santo’s house to tell him the news. Patsy Renzi was there, slouching at the table behind a bottle of cheap Scotch Santo set in front of him. Patsy hadn’t aged well and looked more disreputable than ever. His skin tone has gone from pasty to ashen. Broken as he was, that didn’t stop him from eyeballing Mila. I stepped in front of him and blocked his view. I wasn’t a skinny kid anymore, and I let him know I wouldn’t put up with any shit from him. He looked down at the table and poured himself another shot. Uncle Santo turned to Mila, hugged her and said, “How are you, sweetheart?” “Look,” she said, and showed him the modest diamond on her finger. “When’s the big day?” “New Year’s Eve,” I said. To which Patsy piped up, “How’s that for starting the New Year off with a bang?” Mila, a relatively sheltered Italian Catholic girl looked puzzled. “What does that mean?” I reached across the table for Patsy Renzi, but Uncle Santo stopped me. “He didn’t mean nothin’.” “Bullshit. You gonna let this scum talk like that in front of Mila?” “I’ve got to stop you. You need to understand the guy ain’t right and let this go.” “That’s it? You defending him?” “I’m just asking not to start something here.” “I’m about to finish something.” “Mila,” Uncle Santo said. “Please take him outside and help him cool down. We’ll work this out later.” Mila, still puzzled, asked, “But what happened? What did he mean?” “He didn’t mean anything, sweetheart. Please—take this.” He put a wad of bills in Mila’s hand. “Get him out of here, go someplace nice for dinner tonight. You two kids enjoy yourselves. Get away from us old people.” Mila and I exchanged vows at 8 p.m. on New Year's Eve, then had our reception at Diamante’s Ristorante, which would have been closed for the holiday, but Dom Diamante put on a feast as a favor to Uncle Santo. We spent our wedding night in a ritzy hotel suite. I woke up early the next morning. “Where are you going?” “Business. Back to sleep.” I slid my Colt .45 ACP under my belt. I broke into Patsy Renzi’s house, found him snoring on his couch. Grabbing a hunk of hair to tilt his head, I stared into his bloodshot eyes. I jammed the Colt’s muzzle under his chin. “How’s this for starting the New Year off with a bang?” © 2025 Nick Di Carlo About the author: Nick Di Carlo has taught writing and literature in traditional and nontraditional settings, including maximum security correctional facilities where Lawrence R. Reis, author of Wolf Masks: Violence in Contemporary Poetry, noted: “Dr. Di Carlo quickly gained the respect and cooperation of the inmates. The men in his classes recognized many similarities between their experiences and his. Those experiences, often dark and sometimes violent, inform and power Dr. Di Carlo’s own writing.” “What happens now?” said the girl.
“We wait,” Mickey told her. Francine had gone off to make the call to the mother, leaving Mickey alone with the girl for the first time since the kidnapping. She’d chosen a public callbox a good thirty miles away, just to cover herself—Francine was smart like that, Mickey thought, always planning ahead—so it was going to be a good hour or two before she was back. “These are really painful,” said the girl, nodding down to where the zip-ties bound her hands, “Can’t you loosen them a bit?” Francine had warned Mickey about this. “The minute I’m gone, the very minute it’s just the two of you in there, that little bitch is going to try it on,” she’d said. “She’s going to see you as the weak link—because you are—and she’s going to try and get you to put your guard down and then she’s going to kick you in the throat or break your nose with her elbow and then she’s going to make a run for it.” At this point Francine had put her hands either side of Mickey’s face, holding him like sandwich meat. She’d looked him straight in the eyes, the way she always did when she was trying to get something to stick. “Don’t fall for it,” she’d told him. “Nothing doing,” Mickey told the girl, “You’ll just have to put up with it.” The girl let herself slump back against the wall. She was twelve years old and small for her age, but something about her face made her look older, as though Mickey could see in her bones the woman she might become. He had the same look about him when he was a kid—like childhood was just an ill-fitting coat you had to wear until you grew into it. “She won’t pay,” the girl said. “I’m telling you. She doesn’t give a shit about me, never has. I’m just in the way.” Mickey wanted to say something, to reassure the girl—it was just his natural instinct; Francine always said it was his best trait, empathy—but then he remembered Francine’s words, her hands on his face, so he kept his mouth shut. The girl went on. “She only had a kid because she wanted a little doll to dress up and be like her. The second I started having my own opinion about things, it was like all the shine came off. I don’t even see her much anymore. It’s just tutors and nannies and housekeeping staff, and maybe on my birthday she gets her assistant to buy me something, like a phone or a Playstation or some jewelry I don’t ever wear. The only time we ever hang out is when they do a profile on her and the PR people tell her that she needs me to be in the photos. Apart from that, she doesn’t care that I’m alive.” She looked up, and Mickey could see that she was near to crying. “You know what that feels like? To know that you’re not wanted?” Her voice cracked on the last word and a sob came out of her. She put her bound hands up, hiding her face, but Mickey could see the heave and fall of her chest as she sobbed. The thing was, he did know. He’d been fourth of seven, all boys, but even sitting in the middle he was still the runt. No good for farm work, he’d been relegated to helping out round the house–but even that was never good enough. He had the shit beaten out of him every week for six years until, at age fifteen, he met Francine and they left it all behind. If Francine hadn’t found him that day at the grocery store, he didn’t know what he’d have done. So many nights he lay in bed after a beating and just wished he was dead. Then Francine came along and it was like the giant hand of God had reached down and plucked him out of his life and set him on another path. Not everyone had a Francine. The girl had stopped sobbing now, and was just staring straight ahead. Mickey recognised that look, had seen it before in the mirror. The look that said there was no point in hoping anymore. It was like he was seeing himself ten years ago, with all the pain and despair and desperation that entailed. “Even if she does pay,” said the girl. “What kind of life am I going to go back to? She’ll blame me for all this, I know she will. She’ll tell me that I owe her, that I’m going to have to spend the rest of my life paying her back, that I’d have been better off if you’d kept me.” Her blue eyes, reddened, looked up at Mickey. “I’m going to be trapped with her forever, with no way out.” A pang went through Mickey, reactivating an ache that had sat in his soul since he was nine years old. This girl had no Francine, but maybe he could be her hand of God. He walked over to the bed, sat down beside her, “There’s always a way,” he said, and he reached up his hands and tenderly, but surely, gripped her throat. ***** Francine came back an hour later. Mickey met her at the door. Her face was alive with anticipation, like she could smell success in the air. “She’s gonna pay,” she said. “The whole amount, no haggling. All we need to do is show her proof of life.” “Francine,” said Mickey, “We might have a little bit of a problem there.” © 2025 Steven Sheil About the author: Steven Sheil is a writer of crime, horror, and weird fiction. His work has previously been published in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Black Static and The Ghastling. His short story The Art Of Cruel Embroidery was nominated for Best Short Story at the 2025 Edgar Awards. He lives in Nottingham, UK. I knocked on Jessie’s door at exactly two in the morning, ready to propose some bad business. It took him a while to answer. He didn’t ask who it was, just opened the door and asked what was up.
“I need a favor,” I said. “Now? Christ, it’s the middle of the night.” “I know. But it’s important.” He stood there in the doorway, his thick arms crossed, belly pushed hard against his cut-off T-shirt. He was a good few inches taller than me. I realized he could kick the hell out of me if he felt like it. Right there on his dirty front porch. “Well, spit it out, dumbass,” he said. “Or I’m going back to sleep.” I swallowed and said, “I need your help.” “Doing what?” “Burying a body.” He rubbed his unruly beard and looked me in the eye for a good twenty seconds before he said, “Come inside.” I went in, and he closed the door behind us. ***** I got this problem; I’ve had it my whole life. I have no idea if people are lying to me or not. In fact, I have zero sense of what anyone thinks of me at all. Playing with other kids when I was little, I would think they were my friends. One time I got home and my dad asked why I was all scuffed up. I told him me and some kids were playing, and he realized they were beating me up. And I just took it cuz I thought that’s what friends did. My dad was pissed, but not at them. He beat me with a belt, saying the world was a tough place and I had to get my act together if I wanted to make it on my own someday. I tried not to cry and told him I’d do my best. Next day, I beat those kids up and got expelled. I never did learn how to figure out who my friends are. I met Jessie a few years back shooting pool in this dive bar near the freeway. We’ve had beers since then. Boosted a couple of cars for fun and profit. Shot guns late at night under the overpass where the sound of big-rigs above us drowned out the noise. I was starting to think he was my friend, a good friend. But I didn’t know for sure. And it was bugging me. So I asked Jessie’s roommate, who tends bar at this place I like, for some advice. He sells pills out of the bar bathroom on busy nights, and I’d seen him and Jessie fighting over money. I guessed they were tight, but I wasn’t really sure. I waited until the place was nearly empty one night and beckoned from my stool. Jessie’s roommate leaned across the bar, turned his ear toward me. “How do you know if someone’s a real friend?” I asked him. He sighed, poured us a couple of shots of whiskey, and said, “If you can call up someone at two in the morning and they agree to help you bury a body, that’s a real friend.” Sounded easy enough to me. ***** I’d been in Jessie’s place before. It was pretty messy, with a lot of empty beer bottles and ashtrays filled with cigarette butts. He offered me a cigarette, and after I said no thanks, he lit one for himself. “So who’s the body?” There was no body. I just wanted to know if Jessie was a real friend or not. But I knew he’d have some questions. I’m not good at making up stuff on the spot so I had my story all planned out. “I was walking home from the bar and some guy was following me. When I asked him what his problem was, he pulled out a knife, told me to give him my wallet. I wasn’t giving my wallet to no one, so we wrestled over the knife and he fell on it and died.” Jessie nodded. “Why bury him?” “I’m on parole.” This was true. “Cops catch me with a dead body, I’m going back to prison for sure.” Also true, but not really a concern since there was no dead body. Jessie exhaled some smoke. “Yeah, I can help you bury him. But I’m gonna need a favor in return.” I shrugged and said sure. Why wouldn’t I? I was feeling pretty good as he led me through his grimy kitchen, out a side door, and into his garage. I had a real friend, something I’d never had before. Now I just had to tell him the truth and everything would be okay. He opened up one of those big chest freezers. I looked inside and saw his roommate, eyes wide, frozen stiff. “I got a body to bury, too,” said Jessie. “We can do ‘em both together.” I stared at his dead roommate for a bit and thought, what would a real friend do here? Which is how I ended up helping Jessie bury a frozen body in the middle of nowhere. I never did fess up about my little lie. And Jessie never even asked me about the other body, like maybe he knew it was bullshit. All that matters is I know Jessie’s a good friend, and he knows the same thing about me. I’d thank his roommate for the advice, but too late for that I guess. © 2025 Bob DeRosa About the author: Where Bob DeRosa comes from, nice guys finish first. His screenwriting credits include Classified, Killers, and White Collar. His short fiction has appeared in Escape Pod, Every Day Fiction, and 365 Tomorrows. When he’s not writing, Bob studies Kenpo karate and keeps his Little Free Library filled with good stuff. Come say hi at bobderosa.com My first happened to be on Halloween. It was easy, and not a little fun. Carter Young holed up in an old farm house, surrounded by fields of pick-your-own pumpkins. Smoke puffed from his chimney. No other houses close by. We’d be the only trick or treaters.
Bascom drove that night. He parked his shiny Continental on the dirt lane beneath some trees with the last crisp leaves clinging to their branches. A soft breeze rattled a few onto the roof. He’d have the thing washed of farm dust and grime by noon tomorrow, he loved that baby so much. Beneath a waning moon, we made our way through the crops. I thought about that Charlie Brown cartoon, the first thing I watched when I bought my new color set just a couple days ago. Funny how the Christmas one last year was all about the warm fuzzies, but in this one, the memorable part is that Snoopy plays the World War One flying ace, shoots down the enemy, gets shot down himself, then goes bird-doggin’ through Paris. I like the cartoons, ’cause they’re easier than the funny papers. Me and Bascom marched through the field, dodging smashed and rotting pumpkins. I managed to twist an ankle. We got to the house, and Young was in his kitchen, a bottle and glass in hand. He saw us at the back door, and must’ve known what was happening. He poured himself a triple, and we let him finish it. “I’ll have the money after the Halloween rush,” he said, without much hope we’d let him off. “That’s what you said about the summer corn season,” Bascom told him. “Face it, farming ain’t your forte.” “Gambling’s gambling,” Young intoned. “Don’t matter if it’s cards or crops.” “You seem to lose either way,” I agreed. “We all do, sooner or later.” He picked up two glasses from the sink and rinsed them out under the tap. He poured shots for each of us. Bascom gestured with his glass and Young led us into the living room. An autumn blaze lit the fireplace and we sat in three old stuffed chairs. The warmth soothed the ache in my twisted ankle. “You know, I thought this place was going to be a cash cow. The building itself is historic, goes back to the 1700s. Was gonna fix it up, sell it for a mint to some history-loving rube from the city.” “Which reminds me,” Bascom said off-handedly. “Any cash hanging around?” Young waved his glass towards a cigar box on the mantle. Bascom nodded for me to check it out. I found almost two hundred in crumpled ones, fives, and tens. Getting in on the ground floor of the pumpkin business really wasn’t the happening thing these days. Young owed our boss upwards of ten grand from the past year. Cards, horses, dogs, he lost at them all. “When you leave, you should take a pumpkin,” Young said. He finished his drink. “They’re just gonna rot anyhow.” Bascom nodded, finished his own drink. He reached for the bottle on the floor by Young. I thought we were all going to have another round so I knocked back mine, too. But instead Bascom swung it hard enough to cave in Young’s skull. Young’s false teeth slipped halfway out of his mouth, and as he collapsed to the floor. I swear he looked just like one of his rotted pumpkins. The place was old, all right. You could smell the dry rot. We left the body on the floor and I used the poker to drag the burning logs onto the rug. We waited long enough to make sure the flames caught, and by the time we were approaching the car, the pumpkin-orange glow of the fire lit our way through the twisted vines. I picked a great big pumpkin for my stoop. It’s not so long since I used to trick-or-treat myself. I guess Young gave me a treat, too, not making a fuss. Anyhow, when I woke up the next morning, kids had splattered it all over the street. © 2025 J. Michael Taylor About the author: J.M. Taylor cooks up his sinister fantasies in Boston where he lives with his wife and son. He has appeared in Tough, Black Cat, and AHMM, among others. His books include Night of the Furies, from New Pulp Press, Dark Heat, from Genretarium, and No Score from Unnerving. When he’s not writing, he teaches under an assumed name. You can find him at jmtaylorcrimewriter.com and on Facebook at Night of the Furies. “What time’s his flight arrive?” Cindy asked.
“Six twenty-five,” I said. “Tomorrow morning?” “No, tonight, in an hour and a half.” “Then that’s eighteen twenty-five,” She said. “You wanna come or not?” “I’d rather not.” “You don't want to come pick up your brother that you haven’t seen in five years?” “Death follows that guy. I’m surprised he even has the balls to come back to Vancouver.” She was putting her toddler’s jacket on him. “Tell him I said hi,” and she scurried out the door. Frankie was flying back home after doing five years at Indian Head Penitentiary for some botched armed robbery. He left Vancouver when his boss’s twenty-eight-year-old wife had a heart attack, smoking meth the night he had an affair with her. Frankie figured twenty-eight was a little young for a heart attack, especially since she never drank, let alone did drugs. He fled to Regina. It didn’t take him long to find birds of his feather, and he was doing ARs. An innocent bystander got shot by Frankie's partner. The cops blasted the killer, and Frankie got five years. He called me a couple times a month, and I threw him a few bucks to catch a flight home on his release. He said, “I don’t want a big fuss, but it would be nice to see family.” I didn’t want to see him, but still, I was thinking of having a couple old buddies over to celebrate Frankie’s release. I dialed Remo, his closest friend. “Hey, Stacks,” Remo answered. ”What’s goin’ on?” “Frankie’s coming home tonight. You want to swing by and have drinks?” The phone was silent for a couple seconds. “I’ll have to take a raincheck; tonight won't work.” “You sure? Just a couple friends. Nothing big.” “I can’t. I’ve got the kids tonight.” On a weeknight? “You sure?” “Some other time. I gotta go.” That was abrupt. I dialed Stewie. “How’s things, Stacks?” “Same old, same old. I was calling to see if you want to come over tonight. I’m having a little get together for Frankie…” “Frankie’s back in town?” There was silence, and I could hear Stewie’s breathing get deep. “You tell that backstabber if I see him on the streets, he’s gettin’ it bad.” “Why the hostility?” “That punk’s done nothing but stir up trouble. There’s a price on his head. If he’s smart, he won't come back here.” “A price. For what?” “Don't play stupid.” “That thing with Angie? That was over five years ago.” “Nothing expires with Anthony. He finds out Frankie’s back, it’ll be messy.” The phone went dead. I called Frankie’s cell to tell him not to catch the flight. No answer. He must be on the plane already. I rushed to the airport and stood in front of the arrival panel at the YVR terminal, calling Frankie’s cell phone, hanging up, and redialing. I looked at the time on my phone. The flight from Regina arrived fifteen minutes ago. I ran to the escalator, taking two steps at a time, down to the carousels. “Excuse me,” I said, squeezing between an elderly couple, blocking the way, sharing the same step. As I approached the bottom step, my foot twisted, and a sharp pain surged through my ankle. I stumbled to the floor. “Careful, son,” the elderly lady said as her husband offered to help me up. I hobbled off, fighting through the pain. I looked down the row of carousels and heard a large steel door slam shut behind me. I turned. People screamed. My heart thudded. The air deflated from my lungs. It wasn’t a door; it was a gunshot. Small-caliber. I plowed through the crowd of screaming people running from the direction of the shot. A couple who braved the incident leaned over a body. The man and woman stood up. I watched the pool of blood slowly widen from Frankie’s head. I felt my spirit spin, flushing away, as the blood flowed through the seams of the grimy floor tile. I looked down into my brother's open, frozen eyes. Light sparkled. Lifeless. I heard his voice whispering: I don't want a big fuss. © 2025 Allen Bell About the author: Allen Bell is a short story writer breaking into the crime fiction and the gritty noir genre. While working full-time, he obtained a Creative Writing Certificate from the University of Calgary. He's constantly on the lookout to knock on or break down doors that present an opportunity for him to get what he's looking for. He's not afraid to get busted up in the process; he's expecting it. When he's not practicing the craft, he spends his time studying the craft. He enjoys beta reading and diving deep into the murky waters of what makes a writer successful. If I wanted to kill you, I wouldn’t advertise it to the world. I wouldn’t tell anyone—not even my mother—that I was going to do it. I wouldn’t frown at you the few times we’re in public together or tell you to keep your opinions to yourself.
Instead, I would study you, dissecting you like an insect under a microscope. Many things change in twenty years; we certainly have. I would have to relearn you, study your habits. Like the way you take your coffee: two sugars and one scoop of cream; the way you always leave it on the counter—unattended—while you go to the bathroom. Or the way you drink other things at night, before stumbling into your bedroom, slamming the door and then crying until you fall asleep. I would also check your medicine cabinet, to see what you’re taking these days, for those times when you can’t sleep. I could ask you, but that would only make you suspicious. “Since when you care?” you'd ask, your lips quivering, and I wouldn’t know how to reply. No, talking to you would be a mistake. If I wanted to kill you, I wouldn’t keep a diary. Unlike you, I wouldn’t pour all my inner thoughts and feelings—too many feelings—into the pages of a leather-bound notebook. I wouldn’t write that I hate my life, that I can’t wait to leave it behind. Instead, I would post pictures of us on Facebook—even if they’re old—with captions worthy of a Hallmark card, saying things like how lucky I am to have a woman in my life who loves me and accepts me for who I am, even if we both know that’s not true. No, if I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead already. I would tell you I had to go on a work trip. And on the day of my departure, I would call to you from outside until you walked out onto the porch, a question on your face. I’d yell “I love you,” and “I’ll miss you,” for all the neighbors to hear. I would blow you a kiss, ignoring your confused—and maybe hopeful—face. Then I would drive a few hours out of my way, rent a room in some roadside motel, and leave my phone in there, knowing it could be tracked. Then I’d drive back, park far away from the house and walk the rest of the way. I would find you deep in sleep, and wake you just long enough to feed you the rest of the pills. Then I would wait until your body got cold before walking back to the car, driving back to the motel, and dozing off while waiting to get the call. When it came, I would cry an Oscar-worthy performance, and talk to the police about the pills, and the diary, reiterating that no matter how much I loved you, you never felt it was enough. And when they asked me if I ever wanted to kill you, like it said in the diary, I would say that if I had truly wanted to kill you, I would have already done it many, many years ago. © 2025 R.S. Nelson About the author: R.S. Nelson is a Latina writer who lives and finds inspiration in Southern California. Her work has appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, SciFiSat, Every Writer, Every Day Fiction, Twin Bird Review, and elsewhere. You can find more of her stories on her website: [email protected] |
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