New Dawn by Beau Johnson
I tell him I was a child when my father is ripped apart. Nine going on ten, in fact. I explain how it went down but admit the pieces of information I’d been given throughout the years can at best only recreate my father’s demise as a facsimile and nothing more. “I do imagine he […]
Urban or Otherwise by Beau Johnson
The first thing you smell is piss. Next, and by extension, you realize it’s yours. The room, you think, is a basement. It seems like a basement. Overhead fluorescents. Concrete floor that gives way to dirt and rebar in places. To your left are worktables and benches lined up at angles and upon which sit […]
Then: Same As Now by Beau Johnson
There are truths to this world. Most are what they should be: universal. Others, however, can be circumvented, allowing men like me to not only flourish, but thrive. It means the list of names we pull from McDonough and a bent cop named Stout works better than I’d hoped. Not perfect by any means, as […]
The Guy Before the Guy by Beau Johnson
Look, I’m not going to sugar coat things. These overhead lights, Danny, this basement, it’s the last place you’re ever going to see. And everything that’s planned, it’s going to happen right over there and you are going to feel every last bit of it before we dump you in that hole. Call it a […]
Humble Beginnings by Beau Johnson
“You right-handed or left-handed?” He looks to me, up from the chair he’s bound to. The wood is mahogany—old, thick, and matching the desk I’m leaning against. Stout juts his chin to the right, the sweat dripping from his goatee adding to dampness already home to his crotch. I cut the zip tie that binds […]
Before the Storm by Beau Johnson
There actually was a time I favoured more conservative methods when extracting information. Not quite naïve, no, but perhaps less committed as I’d one day become. Either way, once Alex starts up the chainsaw and is a quarter of the way through Benny’s right knee, we’re given the name we’d been looking for. Both arms, […]
Smaller Fries by Beau Johnson
As I believed it would, Culver erupts in response to Levinson Ducard’s death. At Jeramiah and I in particular. However, as seen in the footage they release, nothing close to a positive ID could be made. Two reasons for this. One, we knew every angle of every camera in that high-rise going in. The second […]
Patience and Rage by Beau Johnson
Nikki’s Roadhouse. Off a dusty stretch of blacktop between Hanson Falls and Culver City it sits as if awaiting destruction. I’m happy to oblige. Man by the name of Varga is how it begins. He gives up not only Rawlins but the very basement the recording went down. We investigate. Jeramiah into the bar and […]
Free Food and Bean Bags by Beau Johnson
Big Ron’s is a ghost town and Junior and I are in a booth at the back. I ask him to put his phone away. To just turn the fucking thing off. Not a day goes by I don’t wish to have that piece of time back. Junior looks up, his face as angular as […]
Hostile Takeover by Beau Johnson
The table took some doing but the gag, right down to the hooks, color and make, are all his. I tell him how I understand that things aren’t going according to plan, not this far into what he’d been attempting. I go one step further and reveal I’m a fan; that I’d been one for […]
Knit One, Purl Two by Beau Johnson
You will never change. I know that now. I mean, of all men, me and you combined, did you really not once envision this playing out as it has? Tough call, agreed, but the look on your face tells me more than you’re willing to admit, I think. S’okay, though: we’re almost to the end of it.
Twenty years is what I gave you Frank. Twenty years without me saying a word. You’d think a thing like that could buy a bloke anything he desired. That silence for freedom could be a pact any sane man could abide. Couldn’t be done though, could it, Frank? Whatever would a man of my skill set do with nothing but time on his hands? Isn’t that what you said that very first day? It was in your Caddy, no? You and your driver idling right outside the gate? For truth, I think this might have been the exact moment I knew we’d end up coming to heads. Not twenty years ago, not when we were the same. And don’t get me wrong, I understand this, how you see things. But I will not accept everything, Frank. Not after how much I have taken for the team. A man changes is what I have been trying to get through to you. Sometimes this is for good, Frank, sometimes for not so good. The man, he changes regardless. Doing so whether you approve of it or not. This is what I feel you fail to appreciate: that a man’s ways can be left behind. You would have none of it though, would you?
Nope. Not one goddamn ounce.
Love, It Makes the World Go Round by Beau Johnson
I’d like to say it was my earliest memory that I knew I was different. Not the case. Add about four years to the total and then I knew something was up. Follow this with the cats I graduated to and yeah, I’m thinking running over a family of toads with the lawnmower and realizing […]