The American - Number 31

The taco joint had calmed since the failed attack on the counter, but Paul Sr.’s body would not soon forget the mistake. He sat next to his granddaughter and across from his daughter and grandson. Including his son, they were all he had left in this world. He sat and tried to find a way to save them.

The Indian was always here. He was always in this damn place; it was his job. Where the hell was that son of a bitch. Surely, he made it out of Blue Man’s Gorge.  He had to have made it out. His head didn’t get hit that hard.

Look at her. Carolyn’s frazzled. I wonder what’s wrong with her.  She’s probably upset were out someplace. I’ve probably made a scene, or just been hard to carry.  I hate being such a burden. I wish she’d just take me out into the country and leave me. I’d wonder out into the woods and freeze to death. Damn it’s cold in this place.  I wonder where we are?  Why the hell does my head hurt so much? Where’s my wallet?   

"Imprints" by: Joshua Allen

"Imprints"

by: Joshua Allen

as published in

PRO SE PRESENTS Masked Gun Mystery #2 

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Excerpt:      

Alex Stanton clicked the shutter on his camera, knowing that the shot was a good one. Zalia wanted proof that her husband was cheating on her, and he had just gotten it on film: pure light projected onto pure celluloid. Nothing manipulated, nothing artificial. He would develop the film in his darkroom while she watched. Alex turned off all of his other recording equipment, one by one. He knew from experience that the actual photos straight from the camera were the most visceral, but the data he had collected were extensive.

Alex waited until Jon St. Tago finished with the girl, making sure to get enough face shots for a digital signature confirmation, in case this ever went to court. But Alex didn’t think it would. Zalia was never going to leave Jon. That’s what Marseille kept telling him and the sooner he accepted it, the better of he was going to be. Alex packed up his equipment and checked the time. Two hours until he was to meet her in his apartment darkroom. He killed the time with muddy coffee and cancer-free cigarettes -- the pull-tab kind.

She was waiting for him outside his apartment, standing in the cold drizzle, coatless because she had never been practical when it came to weather. Night had settled in and deepened. The moon was hidden or new. There was no way to tell these days. Stars were all blocked by smog.

"The Gray Ghost and the Lightouse Murders" by: Bill Craig

"The Gray Ghost and the

Lightouse Murders"

by: Bill Craig

as published in

PRO SE PRESENTS Masked Gun Mystery #2 

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Excerpt:       

          Under cover of darkness, Evil grows, festering like an infected wound on the underbelly of the city. From the shadows comes an instrument of Justice, a weapon forged in the crucible of his own execution at the hands of the mob. Now he returns to stalk the night as an avenger of Justice... THE GRAY GHOST!

      

       A foghorn called mournfully in the distance, a low plaintive sound that carried across the bay. John Stover heard the distinctive warning song as he exited his coupe and with it, the tempestuous percussion of the Atlantic surf crashing against the rocks far below. It was his third night on the job at the Biscayne Lighthouse—the graveyard shift, maintaining the beacon and listening to the chatter between ships over the shortwave radio— and he still found it exciting. But tonight, the fog rolling in off the sea was already so thick it had made the drive out from town almost as perilous as piloting a freighter along the treacherous coast. 

       Glancing up, he could see the bright beam cutting through the fog and darkness to alert ships that they were getting close to the shore, a welcomed and comforting sight. He grabbed his lunch pail and copy of the local newspaper from the seat beside him.

       Stover had only recently moved to the area, so the ocean was an awe-inspiring sight to the former Iowa farm boy. Tending a lighthouse was lonely work, but growing up in the cornfields, insulated from the outside world, had been lonely in its own way and certainly prepared him for this sort of life. Of course it didn’t hurt that since arriving in Biscayne Bay, he had met a girl that caught his eye in a big way. He smiled at the thought of her, and started to whistle a cheerful tune to counterpoint the foghorn’s dirge as he headed for the door of the lighthouse.

THE OPTIMIST BOOK ONE: You Don’t Know Jack By Chuck Miller - Chapter One

PULP MACHINE EXCLUSIVE!!!!!!

BOOK ONE:

You Don’t Know Jack

By Chuck Miller

CHAPTER ONE: 

VIONNA VALIS

A long time ago, I was something special.

My life, when I was very young, turned bad. It was bad for a while, then it turned good. And it stayed very, very good for a few years. Then it went down the toilet. But during the good part, I was something rare and fine. I did things few other people ever do. I was part of something strange and glorious and ultimately unsustainable. And after that, as I say, came the toilet. I bobbed around in there for twelve years, and then something happened. A dead hand reached out to me from the past. I was so bombed-out and jaded that I might have ignored even that, if the hand hadn’t been clutching money.

I’ve got a story of sorts to tell.

Life being what it is—and what it isn’t—stories don’t really begin or end anywhere. There are things that seem to be more important than other things, and you can focus on those and slice off everything that happened before and  after. Then the whole thing seems to teach a lesson or make a point or offer some kind of closure for one thing or another.

Well, a lot of unusual things happened to me recently, but nothing was really resolved, and I can’t say for sure that I learned any lessons. But I made a bunch of interesting new friends and found, for the first time in many years, something resembling a purpose. Maybe that’s the lesson, then. If so, it’s ongoing, and I am a long way from the jackpot.

Not long ago, I was sitting in a little bar on a side street in the city of Zenith, the place where I was born and where I died. My life had ended twelve years earlier, on a street not far from where I sat.

I was at a table by myself with a drink in front of me. It was one of a very long series. I don’t recall the first,  and cannot envision the last.

I'm a horrible drunkard. That isn't the most important thing about me, but it's one of the most obvious. You need to know it, because it is a part of the context in which everything took place. But it's not the whole thing. It isn’t even the most important.

"Staying Dead" A Tale of Virgil by: C. William Russette

 

"Staying Dead"

A Tale of Virgil 

by: C. William Russette 

as published in

PRO SE PRESENTS Masked Gun Mystery #2 

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Excerpt:

 

Kyoto, Japan, one week ago.

Fuyuhira Minami exited his favorite Karaoke bar well on the road to complete drunkenness and happier than he had been in weeks. Even the near torrential rain coming down didn’t bother him, despite the fact that he had left his umbrella at the office or maybe back in the bar. It didn’t matter, nothing did. He had closed the biggest deal of his life today with a rival genetic research corporation. The fact that the company he worked for was going to be losing five years of breakthrough stem cell research didn’t phase him. They would learn not to pass over worthy researchers for promotion after all is said and done, most definitely.

The money he carried in his briefcase would buy him many nights of pleasure in the arms of which ever lady he chose at his massage parlor. His wife thought he was still at work and she would remain thinking that.

I worked for this.

I deserve this. All she does is whine and cook poor tasting food.

Standing in the downpour he stared out into the traffic, searching for a cab to take him to the pleasure palace. Fuyuhira was having trouble keeping his snake in its cage as he thought of the night that lay ahead. He was about to flag down an oncoming cab when he saw her.

A woman walked toward him under a jade colored umbrella. She wore her hair down and her skirt just above the knee revealing shapely legs. She wasn’t doing anything but trying to navigate the sidewalk amidst other pedestrians, but her body language suggested virginity and innocence. Fuyuhira didn’t know how he could detect such a thing from body language alone, then decided it must be the alcohol speaking.

"Shortages" A Hugh Monn Private Detective Story by: Lee Houston, Jr

"Shortages"

A Hugh Monn Private Detective Story 

by: Lee Houston, Jr.

as published in

PRO SE PRESENTS Masked Gun Mystery #2 

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Excerpt:

 

I go by the name Hugh Monn. Since the end of the so-called ‘great’ war known as U. W. 1, I try to earn an honest living as a private detective on the planet I now call home.

Things had been mixed for me of late. On one hand, it had been a couple of cycles since my last case. But although I tried to be a gentleman and return what I felt I didn’t fully deserve, I wasn’t feeling the pinch from a lack of paying customers just yet, thanks to the generous payment from Dineena Vergas for the brief work I did discovering the fate of her Aunt.

Thankfully I wouldn’t have to push my luck much longer, as a new client walked into my office. He introduced himself as Phillip Thorndyke, a Human like me. Not that it was a rare event to see another Human on the planet Frontera; but like most of the other races in the universe, our species tended to be very spread out amongst the stars.

I stood behind my desk to greet him. He had sun bleached blonde hair, cut short; blue eyes, and was a bit on the buff side with quite a tan. I shook his hand over my desktop, noting immediately the firm grip and rough calluses on his palm. Between that and the average style work clothes he wore, I figured he must do a lot of physical labor somewhere outdoors for a living.

“Good to meet you, Mister Monn. If you’re available, I would like to hire you,” he announced, getting right to business as he sat down in the guest chair in front of my desk.

"Clean Up in Aisle Six" by: Aaron Smith

"Clean Up in Aisle Six"  by: Aaron Smith

as published in

PRO SE PRESENTS Masked Gun Mystery #2 

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Excerpt:

Candace DeMarco parked her car at the farthest end of the parking lot and got out. She never parked close to the store; as the manager, she had a firm policy of all employees leaving the best spots for the use of the customers. It was still dark, only five in the morning. The air was chilly and so was she, except her left hand, which held the Styrofoam cup filled with hot coffee that she had just picked up via drive-thru on her way to open the store. She reached the front doors, which were locked as the store had been closed overnight. She took out her mass of keys, containing the means by which she could open any of the many doors and safes within the large Q & V Supermarket. She selected the appropriate key and inserted it into the lock. The doors opened as she forced them to slide on their tracks. When the store was open for business, the automatic doors would be turned on and part when motion was detected, but for the time being she had to use physical force to open the way.

She stepped inside, simultaneously putting her keys back into her pocket and taking a generous swig of coffee, sugarless with just a touch of cream. The store was lit only by the dim night lighting. The night crew of seven men who worked most nights packing out groceries had been given the night off to allow room for the floor waxing crew to come in and do their thrice yearly task of making the linoleum floors shine, which contributed greatly, in the opinion of Candace DeMarco, to keeping the place looking new and appealing to the public.

"The Compassion Play - An Aloha McCoy Story" - by: Ken Janssens

"The Compassion Play

An Aloha McCoy Story" 

by: Ken Janssens

as published in

PRO SE PRESENTS Masked Gun Mystery #2 

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 Excerpt:

There are stupid people in this world and there are stuuuupid people in this world. I knew I belonged in at least one of those two categories. Don’t believe me? Then why was I hanging a good forty-something feet off the ground by my fingertips?

I had a new plan for this life. It seemed like a good plan. Well, an okay plan… alright, I didn’t think it entirely through. See, I ran a recreation center for youths on the outskirts of The Core and my biggest financial contributor had pulled out.

I had some ad money saved up from my short stint as an Olympic gymnast, but that was mostly for my mortgage. After trying but not succeeding in acquiring some other backers, I had to accept that I needed to find another income. Because I solved a “case” earlier in the month, I figured why not start up a part-time detective agency and run it out of my rec center. The start-up money was nearly a grand. And what’s my net income over the last three weeks? Yep, minus a thousand dollars. I had to start making some money soon. Knowing that was my number one priority, I decided to take on a pro bono case. Oh, I’d figured it out: definitely stuuuupid.

This whole thing began about four-thirty p.m. on a Tuesday. I was in my office going over my budget for the next month. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the headline of a newspaper half hidden under some other papers. ‘Star Teresa Keefe Comes Home.’ I looked at the accompanying photo of The Core’s own Hollywood success story—with her airbrushed skin, red, pixie-style hair, and puckered lips—then I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My sweaty, tangled red-brown hair plastered against my light mocha skin and my formerly-white tank top said ‘Glamorous? Not so much’.

 

The American - Number 30

          Paul took a giant first step towards the enemy. And then another. He dodged right. Then left. His foot turned to straighten his body. He vision of a doctor with an x-ray of his spine flew threw his head, and he lost feeling in his right knee. And then his leg. Over compensating, he attempted to push off of his left leg, and it crumbled underneath him. His body began to fall and the tile turned into a powerful magnet pulling only parts of his body. If not for the momentum that he had created, Paul Sr. would have landed within feet from the counter, instead it threw him head first into the fake paneling, and he blacked out.  

Spinal stenosis is the narrowing of the spinal column that causes pressure on the spinal cord, or narrowing of the openings where spinal nerves leave the spinal column.  Depending on which nerves are affected, spinal stenosis can cause pain or numbness in your legs, back, neck, shoulders or arms; limb weakness and incoordination; loss of sensation in your extremities; and problems with bladder or bowel function. In severe cases of spinal stenosis, surgery is usually recommended to create additional space for the spinal cord or nerves, and if you weren’t so old Mr. McConnell, I would recommend surgery. But really surgery at this point may be too hard on your body.

Are you saying I can’t take it?

I’m not saying that. I know your will is strong enough. But, Mr. McConnell, your body can’t take it.  

You have no idea what my body can take.

Maybe, I don’t, but I’m not wasting valuable time and resources where they’re not needed.

          You mean you don't want to put a bowtie on a turd.

The Book of Green - Number 8

          The splintered stake fell from the sky like lightning from Thor’s fingers.  Everything in the world slowed and Cole’s vision reached a point of righteous clarity. The beast’s stench was alive and his rage was confined in an unmovable corpus.  Islands of the beast’s hide momentarily became visible as the shadowy cloud that orbited its master dissipated and surged. Blood and sweat fell from Cole’s body in equal proportions, as his muscular hands knotted convulsively when the ebony point passed into the shadow. The beast’s lids flared as Cole’s red-dripping hands lowered behind its apex that quickly reached the beast’s skin. The stake went true into the beast’s side behind his colossal front arm.

Slowed for only a moment, the piercing of the stake began to shred the flesh of the creature and sink deeper into the dark cavernous carcass. Harder and harder Cole pushed and further and further the stick burrowed into the beast, until at last, the point of the stake shattered into a million pieces against the iron like green spine of the beast.  The beast did not move, nor did it make a sound.