Does he know? That's the question that jabs Russell in the temple like the business end of an ice pick when he sees who the email is from. It seems a cordial invitation. Lunch, it says. Perhaps it’s just business. But racked between debilitating guilt and a desperate flicker of hope, Russell agonizes. What if it isn't?

    Everything around him is white. The glare of the sun. The light bouncing off the bleached storefronts. The milky cobblestones on the street underfoot. His suit. The linen suit that virtually every businessman in Retiro de Santos wears to ward off the noonday heat. As he approaches the cafe, Russell dabs the sweat from his upper lip with his white handkerchief. Is he sweating from the heat or apprehension? The question remains. Does he know? 

    Russell tells the hostess he is there to meet someone. When he gives her the name, she nods and leads the way. The patio is curiously empty, Russell thinks, but his observation is cut short when he spots the man who invited him to lunch, his client, seated at a table beneath the shadow of a banyan tree.

    "Good of you to join me," Russell's client says.

    "A pleasure to be invited. It's quite lovely here."

    "Attracted to pretty things, are you?"

    Russell's breath catches in his throat. His wavering provides the opportunity for his client to continue. "The concierge at our hotel recommended it."    

    Still on edge, Russell blurts, "Hotel personnel are sometimes rewarded by local establishments for sending business their way."

    "Are you implying I've been duped?"

    "Not at all," Russell responds apologetically. "I'm sure no one would try to take advantage of you."

    "It's generally not a good idea."

    Unsure how to continue, Russell gives a quick, obedient nod of the head, and smiles.

    "Something to drink," the client asks.

    "Uh...I'll have what you're having."

    The client raises his hand, holding up two fingers. Glancing over his shoulder, Russell sees the waiter responding. He feels the need to make small talk, but anxiety muddles his judgement and again he says something he immediately wishes he hadn't.

    "We should go slowly, though. Cold cocktails and hot days can be a lethal combination."

    "Perhaps. But I have learned to discipline the things that give me pleasure."

    "Oh, of course. No advice intended. Just a friendly observation I've had to repeat to myself often."

    "Yes. You are quite a friendly fellow, aren't you? That's what my wife says."

    Russell takes an urgent sip of water. "And how is your lovely wife? I assumed she would be joining us."

    "She was feeling under the weather. Fatigue from travel, you understand."

    "Of course. Too much sun...or local color." 

    "That's one way of putting it," the client says, as the waiter returns and puts the drinks in front of them. "I hope you don't mind, but I've taken the liberty of ordering in advance. Their signature dish."

    "If you like it, I'm sure I will," Russell replies. 

    "That seems to be the case, doesn't it?" Russell's perspiration returns. Again, he is hesitant to respond. His client fills the void.

    "I've decided not to acquire the property you showed us. I thought it appropriate to deliver that little disappointment with the pleasantry of a mollifying meal."

    "That's very kind of you," Russell responds. "Most would have simply called and given me their decision over the phone. Though, I must admit my hopes were up when your wife expressed a desire to see the property a second time."

    "Frankly, it was the occasion of that second visit that solidified my decision."

    "Found it less attractive than on first viewing?"

    "Quite the contrary. She was effusive about the experience. But we both know her excitement was brought about by something altogether unrelated to the property. Need I be specific?"

    Russell's facade collapses, he instantly puts both hands on the table. "Please, let me explain."

    "No need. Recriminations and excuses are tiresome. I've heard them before. You don't think this is her first time, do you?"

    "Please understand. I meant no disrespect to you. The passion of the moment. Her astonishing beauty. I was helpless."

    "Yes, on occasion I've found that my wife is irresistible. But she is my wife."

    Before Russell can continue groveling, the waiter arrives and sets plates in front of them. 

    "Ah, lunch," the client says. "Tell me what you think."

    "Sir, I truly regret what happened, It was never my intention to—"

    "No. Not about that. Tell me what you think of the fish?"

Russel is beside himself. Unsure of how to react, he picks up his fork and samples a small piece of flesh. "Hmm. Makes the lips tingle."

    "That strange feeling in your mouth is the beginning of your central nervous system shutting down."

    Russell tries to speak, but only manages, "Wha..."

    "Next, you will become dizzy. But you won't fall because severe paralysis will immediately set in. You'll be unable to move."

    Russell hears but can't reply.

    "You'll soon lose all feeling in your face. It's possible you may vomit, but you'll remain fully conscious. At least until the poison reaches your diaphragm. At which time you'll die of asphyxia."

    Russell's eyes are locked in horror.

    "I mislead you. This cafe is actually owned by a man who owed me quite a sum. To repay, he suggested a special preparation of the blowfish. Now his debt is paid in full. And soon, yours will be."

    Russell is rigid. His face wrapped in a virtual death mask.

    As the client rises to leave, he says, "I realize etiquette dictates you stand as we part, but you needn't attempt it. What would be the point?"

    The movement of the sun has left the table no longer in shade. Intense light blinds Russell's spellbound eyes. He hears the tinkle of glasses, the rattle of plates, and noises from the street nearby, but is incapable of soliciting help. For Russell, now and forever, there is only white.

​© 2026 Joe Kilgore

About the author:
Joe Kilgore is an award-winning author of novels, novellas, screenplays, and short stories. He lives and writes in Austin, Texas. You can learn more about Joe and his work at his website: https://joekilgore.com

Ratter ducked out of the rain. He joined Sam under the eaves of Dog Eared Books on Valencia. The place closed at ten, ages ago, but the entry still smelled like old books. Sam nodded at Ratter and took a sip from his corner store coffee. None of the fancier places were open.

"Got your text. What's so important we meet in the middle of the night?" Sam asked.

Ratter rubbed his hands together and gnawed on a toothpick. The thin mustache over his pale lips twitched. "A sure cinch," he replied.

Sam took a breath, counted to three. "A what?"


"A sure cinch. An easy score. Loading truck is parked near the de Young."

"A sure thing? Think that's what you mean."

Ratter wore a black trench coat with the collar turned up. His curly brown hair hung in wet spirals to his shoulders. On his feet were a pair of glossy black Doc Martens. Not good for running, but handy for violence, particularly if they were steel toed. Sam himself wore a black sweatshirt under a large green flannel with a pair of gray corduroys and black slip-on canvas shoes. Good for comfort. Not much else.

"It's a cinch though, a cinch and a sure thing," Ratter said. "A sure cinch."

"Sure it is."

"Got a car coming. It's unguarded for the next hour according to my guy on the inside. And get this, Sam. There's nothing but a single busted security camera back there!"

Sam sipped his coffee and pondered the rain. The neon closed sign reflected in the puddle at his feet. "What's in the loading truck?"

"Coins. Lots of rare coins. Know a guy who works there. He said something about error pennies, copper pennies, Morgan silver dollars, worth a mint I'm told. Just sitting there until one a.m.. Gonna put them on exhibit or something."

"What happens at one?"

"That's when the crew comes back from break, I guess. I don't know."

"Lot of security in the Park," Sam said. "Got a reliable ride?" Sam’s own vehicle, a beat up old Volvo, was in the shop.

"I need your help moving the stuff. That's it. You'll get a cut of the sales when I finagle a buyer."

Sam drank. Coffee burned as it went down. Ratter pulled his phone from his back pocket. Water dripped from his nose. "Ride's here."

A white Chrysler Pacifica hummed into view. Rain dribbled off the minivan as it pulled to the corner. Weather didn't seem to affect the LiDAR or the cameras mounted on the roof.

Sam stepped back, fading into the shadows. His back pressed against the cold door of the bookstore.

"I call shotgun," said Ratter.

"The fuck is this? You called a Waymo?"

"Hell yeah," Ratter said. "Ever been in one?"

"These things keep a record, Ratter. You're out of your goddamn mind."

"What are you, a caveman? Nothing to worry about! You'll see!" Ratter made his way to the silent vehicle. "Got the minivan so there's more room for the loot."

"Goodnight, Ratter." Sam started walking toward Guerrero Street. Like Ratter he turned his collar up to obscure his face.

Ratter shouted after him. "C’mon, brother. You'll regret this! You'll see, Sam!"

Sam winced at the use of his name so close to the autonomous transport. The Waymo swallowed its human and disappeared into the drizzling night.

"Regret it already," Sam said. “Even the coffee’s stupid.”

A week later, when the Chronicle reported no new leads in the coin heist and Sam found himself short on rent, he wished he’d had more faith.

​© 2026 Patrick Whitehurst

About the author: 
Patrick Whitehurst writes both fiction and non-fiction. As a former reporter, he developed a love for writing short and fast, which he uses to his advantage in the flash fiction realm. Find him online at patrickwhitehurst.com.

​Mina stood on the bridge, looking down at the river. Mist swirled around the banks, making it seem like the shore was moving rather than the water. During the day, it was muddy brown, but now, it was blacker than the night. It reminded her of a curtain, pulled after the final act of a play. “All the world’s a stage,” she whispered. She loved the sound of that line when she was a little girl.

The whoop of a siren made her jump. She turned on her heel, pressing her back against the railing. The police cruiser’s passenger window rolled down. “Everything okay, ma’am?”

The officer’s face was blank as his eyes scanned her, trying to fit her into some familiar box.

A light drizzle started to fall as she said, “Yes, I’m fine, thanks,” and began walking towards the near side of the bridge.

“You should get home,” the officer called after her. “It’s a nasty night.” He rolled up the window but the cruiser didn’t start moving until Mina was safely off the bridge.

Home, Mina thought bitterly. “Home” was a town in Vermont called Sharon, not the three paint-peeling rooms where she slept.

At the next corner, Mina pulled the envelope from her coat pocket and dropped it into the mailbox. It was so old-fashioned it seemed almost foreign. Writing so much by hand was awkward and left her fingers cramped, but an email or a text was too impersonal for something like this. Cramps were nothing, though. She put up with a lot worse over the last four years—the drunken rages, the slaps that became beatings. Besides, she had to let Mom and Dad know about Ben, the grandson they’d never even met. When everything was said and done, he would end up with them. She walked on through the night.

The next cross-street was busy, even close to midnight. Cars and trucks and the occasional bus zoomed past, sending up dirty spray that splashed the sidewalk. The movement, the red and gold lights through the rain and mist, was mesmerizing. She stood a moment watching, wondering how many cars there were in the city. Unlike her, they were all going somewhere, every day, every hour.

“Miss,” a soft voice near her elbow said. “It isn’t safe to stand so close to the edge.”

Mina looked down and met the eyes of an elderly woman not even five feet tall. She reminded Mina of her great-grandmother, who was so tiny Mina called her “Little Grammy” when she was a child. A lump formed in her throat and her eyes burned.

“You’re right. Thank you, ma’am,” she said. At the light, the two of them crossed together.

The drugstore on the next block was still open. Mina blinked as she passed into the brightly lit store. “Can I help you?” a clerk called out.

Mina went to the counter and asked for the strongest sleeping pills they sold without a prescription. “And a bottle of your cheapest vodka, please.”

The man gave her a strange look for a moment, but only asked to see her ID. She presented it, paid, and put both box and bottle into her pocket.

“Have a nice night, ma’am,” the clerk told her, but got no answer.

Mina unlocked the faded green door of her building, and climbed creaking stairs to the third floor. Inside the apartment, she shed her coat, and went into the kitchen. Opening the box of pills, she popped each one from its foil pocket, making a pile on the scarred plastic table. With the base of the vodka bottle, she ground the pile into a fine powder. She cracked the seal on the bottle, took a deep swig, set it down. Scooping the white powder into her hand, she slowly poured it into the neck of the bottle, careful not to lose any, then recapped and shook it. The liquid was a little cloudy now, but it didn’t matter.

Mina moved through the living room quietly, careful not to disturb the little boy asleep on the sofa. In the bedroom, she shook the sleeping man awake. “Here, I got your bottle, just like you asked.”

© 2026 Brandon Barrows

About the author: 
Brandon Barrows is the author of more than a dozen books, his most recent Sinners Ride from 13 Days Publishing. He has also published over one hundred short stories for which he is a Mustang Award winner and a two-time Derringer Award nominee.

​Find more at http://www.brandonbarrowscomics.com

“Rock beats paper,” my baby brother Matthew used to say when we were kids and played ‘Rock, Paper, Scissors’ in the locked closet, the light bulb illuminating our skinny fingers, our bodies crammed together in the suffocating space. “No, paper beats rock,” I’d correct him like a good older sister, wrapping my hand over his tiny fist for the hundredth time, just like Mom taught us when she was alive and we were free to roam around.   

Growing up, I was tempted to run away, but I thought of Matthew, alone… with Dad. That stopped me every time. When Matthew finally turned eighteen, we both left the house. We got jobs, found an apartment, and for a while it was great, starting anew, just the two of us. But Matthew couldn’t leave the past behind. After he found out that Dad had a new family, he spent hours hiding behind the bushes of Dad’s new house, watching him laugh and play with his new kids.

I begged Matthew to stop and come home with me, but he wouldn’t listen. 

Once, when Dad was having dinner, Matthew grabbed the big rock by the front door, the one hiding the house key, and hurled it at the bay window. Dad might have let it go if his new kids hadn’t been playing near the window when the shattered glass flew into the living room, covering their heads, their faces, their tiny hands.

When the judge served him his sentence, Matthew remembered that paper beats rock. He tried to appeal, arguing insanity, but since he didn’t tell his lawyer or the judge or anyone else about the long hours we spent in that closet, hearing our stomachs roar, tasting the cracks on our lips, smelling our soiled bodies, the judge denied his appeal.

Dad was in court that day, probably to ensure we wouldn’t say a word. Or maybe because he really wanted to see Matthew locked up, along with his secrets, kept far away from his new life. If Dad had only known his son, he wouldn’t have been afraid. Matthew was always good at keeping secrets; I know because he didn’t tell anyone I was next to him when he threw the rock.
Maybe that was why I found the courage to appeal to what was left of Dad’s humanity, begging him to drop the charges against Matthew, before it was too late. In reply, he gave me his arrogant smile, the same one he used to show us who was in control. 

When I left the courtroom, I thought about Matthew, locked up again, alone, and then I thought about Dad’s new kids.

The more I thought about them, the more furiously the rage bubbled under my skin. So that night, I grabbed Dad’s house key from under the rock and stabbed his face in the family portrait, slashing the canvas with the scissors again and again, until I couldn’t move my arm anymore. When I left, cold sweat dripped down my back and my hand bore the marks of the steel blades, but laughter grew inside my head, spreading like the roots of a tree.

Dad didn’t call the police this time, but he stayed locked at home and got rid of the key and the rock by the door.

I guess he forgot there are bigger rocks everywhere. 

When Dad went jogging in the canyon one morning, I followed him. He was fast, but I was faster. Rock might not beat paper, but it can certainly beat you senseless. It might even break open a head, making it look like someone tripped and had a terrible accident.

When I went to visit Matthew in jail, we played “Rock, Paper, Scissors” in silence, as an homage to the things we endured, and overcame. As always, I chose paper to wrap around his rock.

But this time, he chose scissors.

​© 2026 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, Twin Bird Review, the podcast Tales to Terrify, and elsewhere. You can find more of her stories on her website: [email protected]

“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.