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“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]
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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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