The old cabin creaked and shuddered in the harsh winter wind. It was late November, 1857 and Jess Bender sat slowly rocking in the big pine chair he had made years ago. He was wrapped in an old buffalo blanket, but was still shivering. The one room cabin was warmed by a fire burning in […]
Old age had blurred Sol Horror into a walking ghost. He had made a living out of swallowing up this town’s demons. Until, that was, Rudy Russo handcuffed him to the slaughterhouse railings and thrashed him to within an inch of his life. He was an elderly man, and Rudy could have killed him with […]
“Coming out with us tonight, Pearl?” Sam asked, poking his head inside her trailer. He caught a glimpse of her in the faint moonlight just before the gauzy curtains blew inward, obscuring her. The candle on the dressing table shivered, but she cupped it in time. Her hands looked unusually white, but then he realized […]
He stared up at the moon in the crimson sky. He lowered his head and squinted at the syringe as his fingers drew back the plunger. Golden liquid rushed into the barrel from the steel tin. He slowed his breathing and took off the wrist watch the Department had given him for his twenty years […]
“You ever have a woman get you in the God way?” “I ain’t sure I follow you there, mister,” Sam said, annoyed that this stranger had yet again trespassed against the peace of his mealtime. Shoulda knowed from that damn preacher hat, Sam thought, tall and rounded up top with its wide, flat brim. Shoulda […]
“Try this baby out,” Murphy said handing a deep walnut stocked shotgun across the counter to Edelstein whose arms were weighed down by its heft. “Fits you like a glove,” Murphy said barely able to keep a smile from erupting on his map-of-Ireland face. “I’ll be right back, gotta take care of the lady at […]
Florida—1968 Bix Hertlein waking up slumped in the driver’s seat of his ‘64 Buick Riviera. Bix’s left hand covers a hole in his gut, his right grips a trumpet. A blood spattered bottle of rye sits between his legs. Dark outside. Stopped on a dirt road flanked by orange groves, sled’s 465 Wildcat engine idling, […]
For weeks on end it had been hotter than Billy be damned. Heat lie on the parched, arid land like a wool blanket that could not be kicked off. Before noon each day, the sky turned a flat white, the sun becoming an unblinking eye of fire. There were no clouds, not a breath of […]
Ernest sat in his rig at the Port of Oakland devouring egg chorizo burritos while waiting for a load of cheap Chinese crap. It was taking forever. He’d called Darla three times last night, but she hadn’t answered. Too busy bumpin’ uglies with some skinny punk. By seven he was hauling butt, eastbound and down. […]
Jake hid in his car two houses down from Dominic Salvatore. He was lying in the back seat of his Audi peeking out the back window staring hard at Salvatore’s front door. He was on one of the narrow avenues in the foggy Richmond section of San Francisco, where tiny two-story houses are so close […]
I hear five loud reports tear through the dusk sky, then a heavy sound of metal and glass crashing. Sirens come immediately, wailing like harbingers of death in Biblical times. The others on the train station platform fall silent, exchanging somber glances, all of us reminded of how sudden and intrusive the forces of chaos […]
“Mary! Get in the house and bar the door.” God knows I loved that woman, but she had a passel of stubborn in her. Mary ignored me as she was want to do in most things. She stood firm and holding my old Navy with both hands she fired at the man riding her down. […]
