New Print Work from Gordon Highland and Caleb J Ross
Gordon Highland, whose short In the Bag appeared on the site last year, has his debut novel Major Inversions available from CreateSpace and Amazon (Kindle edition also available).
Caleb J Ross, whose short A Trench is No Place for God was an entrant in the 2008 Short Fiction Competition, has his chapbook Charactered Pieces available for pre-order from the Outsider Writers Collective.
Tabula Rasa by Eirik Gumeny
Greyson’d seen the old man ‘round before, standing on the corners, talking and lecturing on to anyone who would listen and, lot of times, to those who wouldn’t. The old man liked to say he was a prophet. Spreading God’s word and saving people from their sins, talking ‘em ‘way from temptations and damnation. Greyson’d only talked to him once his own self, explained to the preacher how he’d killed God, stabbed him with a knife, and how he felt real bad about it. Told the old man it was by mistake, though, Greyson wasn’t to blame. And the preacher man said not to worry, said God’s a tough old bastard, harder to kill than that, and just about filled to busting with forgiveness. Greyson, well, he sure felt better hearing that, he did. So when Greyson seen the prophet man comin’ round again, he knew good things were in store for him.
The old man was on a bus bench, sittin’ and eatin’, biting into a White Castle hamburger with a whole bag more on his lap. Greyson could tell there was more food in there than the old man could handle, more’n enough to share with Greyson. So Greyson asked the old man for a burger and the old man said no and Greyson said he’d pay the man and the old man said yes. But Greyson, Greyson didn’t have no cash. Didn’t have anything worth anything, neither. The preacher man shrugged and kept on eatin’, right there in front of Greyson.
Greyson watched him, saw him shovel another hamburger into his big ol’ beard. Greyson was staring at the cracked lips and cracked teeth hidden behind all that fur when Greyson started remembering some of the old man’s speechifying. Great, loud sermons about fire and brimstone and eternal souls. And Greyson realized maybe he had something worth something after all.
Greyson asked the old man if he’d trade, a barter to help Greyson fill his belly proper. He’d been walking since yesterday, hadn’t had the time to eat and he was damn near starving now. The prophet man, he was leery, but Greyson, Greyson could talk, too, and he convinced the preacher he was sincere.
Way Greyson figured it, he wasn’t getting into Heaven, not after all he’s done. Greyson sure wouldn’t be comfortable with living with God anyways. No one would, not if they’d killed ‘im once, even by accident. So Greyson didn’t need his soul for Heaven. And Hell, Hell didn’t seem like too great a place neither. Not somewhere you’d look forward to spending forever. So Greyson didn’t need his soul for Hell. And, fuck it all, if the preacher was willing to part with a bagful of greasy meat in exchange for one lousy soul, who was Greyson to argue. He was hungry. So he sold his soul and took his hamburgers.
Black Stone Heart by Christopher J. Dwyer
City lights dance above us like dying fireflies. The night air is as sweet as a country morning, waves of a new summer throwing a warm coverlet of dew across our faces. She walks with soft steps, as if she doesn’t want to wake the dead souls hidden beneath the concrete of the sidewalk. Every few seconds our arms brush each other and the touch anesthetizes the blood swimming beneath the surface.
We’re the only bodies on the street this late at night. Jenna looks over and her eyes glimmer with a gray glow. Her fingers find mine and she pulls my hand to the air. Dimples collude in her porcelain face, and I’m afraid that a kiss will crack her skin into a thousand dusty pieces. We reach a set of red brick stairs and she’s the first one to take flight, jet black flats scampering with loud scratches across every step. I follow and take slow steps until I’m standing next to her. The front door of the building is as brown as week-old vomit. She turns the doorknob with a smile and motions for me to follow her.
“Are you tired?” She bites her lower lip.
I raise my eyebrows and wonder what she’ll look like with my cock in her mouth. “Not at all.”
She swishes the blonde locks out of her face, golden strands of hair as curled as the wings of a dead baby swan. She starts up the inner flight of stairs and I follow behind. Her ass sways in tight black jeans, a hypnotic swing that almost makes me trip over my own feet. She reaches the second floor before me and fumbles for keys in her tiny red leather purse. It takes her a few minutes to find the right one.
“I had a great time,” she says, swinging open the apartment door. She tosses her purse on a small wooden stool and flips on the living room lamp.
I nod. “Me too.” Her apartment smells like a funeral home.
She unzips her jacket, slides her thin pale arms out of the sleeves. Three koi fish are tattooed on her left arm. The ink looks fresh, as if the slimy creatures are going to jump off her skin and into the kitchen sink. Jenna lights a cigarette and offers me one. I slip it between dry lips and let her light its tip.
Black Scarf by Michael R. Colangelo
I’m a shitty cop, I admit.
I’m also dirty. It’s just a pay check to me.
So sue me.
She has been dead for a few days, already.
When I get there, Hiro is sitting at her vanity mirror inspecting her things.
She had quite a collection of jewelry.
She’s either rich, or the men that give her these things are rich.
One of them is a sicko too.
I say hello to Hiro. Then I make a joke about his sexuality. I gesture at the vanity table so he gets my joke.
The Chinaman’s got no sense of humor though. He returns my greeting with that old familiar stone gaze of his.
Hiro’s some sort of super detective back where he’s from. They paired me up with him because the Chief is fed up with me.
So I speak English for him and help him read road signs. I run him his coffee and donuts.
I drift around the bed and have a look.
There are a lot of outfits hanging on the closet door slats as well as the change divider. There are lots of frilly dresses and lots of see-through ones too. Same goes for her underwear.
A black silk scarf has been knotted tightly around her throat. Beneath her body, the white mattress is soaked rust colored with her blood.
The sheets are thrown about in a tangle. Her naked body is still twisted and frozen in its death throes.
I can’t imagine being systematically strangled, violated, and cut to pieces is a pleasant way to die.
Hiro thinks there’s more than one guy doing this.
He suggests there are maybe three or four at the same time as he taps about the underside of the vanity.
I poke around in her closet and find a dress made entirely of chain that has been woven together like fishnet.
I admit. I’m having trouble not envisioning it on the dead body behind me.
Moments later, Hiro is standing at the door putting on his hat. He has a film canister tucked beneath his arm.
It was in a secret compartment in the vanity.
It’s a film reel titled Fanny and the Horseman.
Hiro wants me to drive him back to the station and set up the projector to watch the movie.
I oblige him.
Before we get there, he mentions in that annoying, whispery voice of his that he wants donuts first.
We go to Dad’s Donuts across from the old Crowne Theatre.
Over coffee, I try to get his story out of him again.
He gives me the same vague shit about a crime family that has moved over to California.
Apparently, he busted up their operations so badly over there that they fled the country to get away from him.
Back at the station, we set up the projector and watch the movie.
Here’s my paperwork on it:
Woolgathering by Craig Wallwork
At that time in my life when I cared little of the future because I had so much of it in my pockets, I would visit a small café near my home every morning for boiled egg on toast. I do not remember the name of the café. I do not know if the café had a name! I imagine it did, but at that time, I had a stoop, and one can only assume too that the café’s sign was high above the door, far from where my eyes could see.
The woman who ran the café was a woman, and I remember thinking the first time I entered the café that if she tried, she would scrub up quite well. Because I frequented the place I became quite pally with the woman, and we would talk and I eventually married her and now she is dead. That is pretty much the whole story.
Of course, I have missed out many things. I must confess to you all that those missing incidents were in fact happy incidents, but to recall them would only make me sad, and in turn, may mutate into what miserable folk call regret. And I must confess this too; a man can die if his head and heart swells with too many regrets. I know because my father died of a similar fate. I once asked my father of his regrets, and he said he had many, but the single most regret he had was he wished he had slept with more women before he met my mother. I left the room, shortly thereafter, with a red face and much confusion in my mind. Read more…
Dumpster Hotel by Willie Smith
A scrawny drifter crawls in to spend the night. A rare but not unheard-of treat. He squirms a moment, then settles down. Mutters half asleep treatment locked him out. Because the social worker sent him first to Harborview. Where he encountered the wrong desk.
Security frogmarched him off because he was drunk. Took till sundown to convince further authorities he had come because he was drunk – needed a medical pass.
Subsequent to the Second Coming of Christ, a nurse appeared. A nurse neither cute, female, nor polite. But who, after lengthy abuse, duly certified him an alcoholic.
He leaves pass in hand. Weaves downhill smack into a tart. Receives from her pimp a cauliflower. Breaks his wrist on a parking meter attempting to retaliate. Shoplifts a quart of Schenley’s to kill the pain. Fleeing a cop, ditches the gin in the gutter after one lousy swig.
Loses the pass in a gust that seems to affect nothing else in the area. Recovers pass from Second Avenue, inadvertently causing a bus to sideswipe a Mercedes. Observes the paper to be now covered with blood, gin; somehow fecal matter.
Hides in a doorway to cleanse the document with urine. Is in the process accosted by a razor-toting crack freak with a thing for penises. Escapes jewels intact – even zipper zipped – in some fashion currently escaping memory, as he mumbles near dawn into a garbage-strewn slumber. But not before divulging he finally did rediscover the door to treatment. Only to learn his bed, in the meantime, had been awarded to some other inconsiderate addict.
The Knots by Colin O’Sullivan
Rain was coming down like it meant every drop. Wind too in accompaniment, providing the backdrop. Hiroko especially liked it this way, the wildness fitting, if only it could always be this harsh. The lights of his room were on as she pulled into the enclosed parking area, he’s in – well, of course he is – waiting.
Masataka slipped down the back stairs and went to the car to greet her. She hugged him hard, her nails digging into the back of his neck. Friday night. All right then.
“In the back?” he asked.
“Yep.”
He pulled the man out of the back seat, all tied and gagged as expected, rope chaffing wrists.
“Nice job,” he said to Hiroko, looking at the knots.
Hiroko smiled back at Masataka, enjoying the praise, her tingle beginning. Before she closed the door of the love hotel behind her, she looked to the bruised, purple sky, in hope of thunder or lightning, but nothing yet.
They lugged him into the room and let him flop there on the carpet. Some of the rain had gotten on him, his sweater flecked with large wet patches, his baldness shining, dirt on the end of his jeans too, after the drag across the gravel and up the filthy stairs.
“Look at the state of you,” Masataka said, looking down at him.
Hiroko laughed her heartiest, some of the night’s nerves showing in it; she couldn’t wait to get to the bedroom.
Live Bait: Post Aut Propter by Brandt Miles
The light above me hung there like a broken halo, an oblong circle of cadmium yellow splintered by the darkness of night. The crown of my head was pressed into the lamp post, and every time my heart beat, my skull knocked against the knurled and tarred wood. I coughed, feeling blood sluice out of me, flowing across my skin like warm milk. Some of it had poured into my boot, and it was thick and slippery between my toes. My sock was soggy, and quickly cooling in the November air. I moved my right arm ever so slightly, and a jet of warmth spurted onto my face, a small rivulet of blood trickling down the slope of my jaw and pooling in the crevice of my mouth.
My sensorium was shutting down, searching desperately for a foothold. What was left of my sight was essentially a descending cone, narrow from the halo falling wide to the earth, encircling me, my own spotlight, my own private sun. My hearing was also trapped inside this cocoon, but was halfway gone; my left ear was reaching for anything, but my right ear was a ringing vacuum of sound, pulled inside out, under water, under blood. All I could feel was divided bilaterally, a straight razor of warmth and cold cutting diagonally from my shoulder to my leg. My body quivered with each beat of my heart, a tightening convulsion in the back of my neck. I watched as my chest rose then slowly fell. With each exhalation I felt new blood spill from somewhere deep inside of me.
“…You don’t even know how lucky you are…”
At my right side, my fingers combed through cold blades of grass, hunting for the smooth plastic of the video camera. Every move of my finger pulled at the tendons in my forearm, shifted the medial head of my tricep. The muscles twitched along my shoulder, and more blood poured out of me, the sound like vomit slapping wetly against the ground.
“…In the Dark Ages, many Christ…i…a…n…s thought that the Pope of Rome was the Antic…h…r…i…s…t…”
In the Bag by Gordon Highland
On the doorstep, a weary smile conspired below purple shades that swallowed the rest of her face. “Are you Vince?” She offered her wrist at full extension.
The audio meters danced in sync with her voice as the record light persisted and timecode streamed in the viewfinder. His hand reached into frame to take hers. The smack of lips on flesh peaked the left channel as his lens wandered to her overexposed white pants and glittered toes in lucite heels.
“Guys, this is Faith,” he said to no one. “We’re gonna put her through the paces today.”
Faith nodded until no response came, then air-slit her throat with a finger. Once off the record, she turned away and raised a cell phone to her ear.
“Sorry ’bout that. Yep, got it with me. Three-thirty, then.” She snapped the clamshell shut and shifted the weight of her shouldered gym bag as she wedged past Vince through the doorway.
Wind chimes mingled with coconut oil and gasoline, and the gray bristles of his Yosemite Sam twitched.
“I know I know, I’m early,” she said. “You guys just do what you gotta, and I’ll be at the craft table or in makeup.”
“The um, accommodations are pretty modest around here.”
“Pretty?” She nosed toward the featureless living room and vacant kitchen.
“There’s some bananas there in the hammock if you want,” he said. “But on the phone I did say to show up camera-ready.”
“I’d have remembered that.”
“Well, if you want, Chandra keeps some stuff in the master bath–”
She stepped out from behind her glasses and clipped them to the cleavage-strained neck of her tank top. She sighed, poking her tongue into her cheek. Hawaiian, possibly Thai, but a couple of American generations had blended ethnicity enough to conquer any Pacific Rim market.
“–room.” He gulped air.
“Doubt she has my colors.” She patted her gym bag. “You’re lucky I brought my kit. We up there?” She pointed her phone to the second-floor railing and mounted the stairs before Vince could do anything but bring up the rear. Her white seat wiper-bladed in his LCD on the ascent, inked butterfly wings peeking out the top.
Kids Can Be Mean: A Heartless Story by Gary Paul Libero
His note blamed, like, Everybody. No one actually read it, but some freshman on the baseball team, his dad’s on the local force, he knew everything that went down. Word trickled from his mouth to locker chatter a day after the incident, the same day the teachers couldn’t stop yapping about the presidential ballots being recounted three times over and questioned what this world was coming to. There must have been, like, an insanity cloud over the world that week.
I’m no doubt included in that Everybody statement, but totally shouldn’t be. Trust. Kids can be, like, so mean. I’m not the one who went sticking magnets inside his locker to make the little bent nails cling to the outside, in the shape of a miniature dick. That got laughs for days. He’d no sooner swipe all the nails onto the floor and they’d be back up by next period. No one knew him very well, but weren’t afraid to have giggle at his expense. I mean, at least I tried helping the kid.
I didn’t make up that stupid nickname either. Brad. I always thought that was, like, his real name and everything. That’s what everybody called him. Brad. Suze told me the boys from his gym class tattooed him as Brad and it stuck. Suze had some classes with the kid and said teachers even called him Brad because they never look at their class rosters and just go along with what they hear in the halls. The nickname was in reference to his, like, smallness. Ya know, down there. Suze heard that Brad always showered after everyone finished in the stalls, but one day the entire class waited for him, like a trap, by his gym locker. Suze said they snatched his towel from around his waist and his junk was there for all the whole class to laugh at. I guess a few of them held the kid against the lockers or something and whipped a wet corner of the towel at him. Rat tails, they call it. They said his dick was tiny as a finishing nail, hence the nickname. Leave it to the jocks and woodshop rejects to come up with that one. The kid looked like a Brad so I never questioned it. We’d be in the same huge school system for, like, ever, but never really crossed paths. So many kids, so many classes, so many cliques, it was impossible for everybody to know everybody. But Brad blamed each and every one of us like we all rat tailed him at one point in his academic life. I’m not like that at all. Trust.
