by Luca Veste
‘Move it, road hog,’ Rob howled at a green wagon ahead, veered into the oncoming lane to pass.
The car stalled out, and Rob gaped at the oncoming traffic. Stomped the useless pedal. Twisted the key, panicked at the starter’s fruitless groans.
Marty felt ice in his belly turn to fire. Fought the wheel one handed, rolled them to a stop in the weeds of the shoulder .
‘Shit, his father’s coming!’ Jerry pointed.
Marty raised his fist, then felt the Colt’s cold muzzle at his throat.
Harve walked slow to let the boy stew over his foolishness. He’d have him break the whole car down and put it together, before he got to drive it again. These kids didn’t know what they had. No draft card to give them cold sweats at night. No staring at missing chunks of yourself fit for butcher’s paper.
The boy got out of the car with the shitbird from next door.
‘Hey, janitor.’ Rob jabbed the Colt into his son’s neck.
Harve raised his hands. ‘Aim it at me,’ Harve said.
‘Fix this piece of shit.’
‘Dad, I’m sorry—’
‘It’s alright.’ He sat in the car, reached under the seat to twist the valve blocking the gas line. Finessed the pedal and fired her up. Revved until she rumbled true.
‘Now get the fuck out,’ Rob laughed. Poked the gun at Harve’s peppered high and tight.
Harve saw himself twisting the gun, breaking the Cort boy’s finger, chopping his throat until thick dark blood poured from his mouth. Also saw a half inch of GI hardball punching a hole through Marty’s face.
He got out of the car.
Rob smiled and slid into the doeskin vinyl seat. Pulled the door shut, revved the engine. Jerry crawled up front.
‘Dad, no!’
‘Martin,’ Harve barked, gripped the boy’s wrist.
‘I used to shit in the tank of the teacher’s crapper,’ Rob sneered. ‘Hope you liked cleaning it up, old man.’
‘Fuck you, Rob!’
Rob flipped them the finger and gunned it, leaving acrid smoke and twin black scars on the asphalt as he peeled away.
Harve squeezed the back of Marty’s neck. ‘It’s just a car, son.’
Marty’s lip quivered as the engine’s roar faded away.
BIO: Thomas Pluck writes unflinching fiction with heart. His story ‘Black-Eyed Susan’ won the 1st place Bullet Award in September 2011. His stories appear in Pulp Modern, Crimespree Magazine, Beat to a Pulp, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, and The Utne Reader and elsewhere. His work will appear soon in Needle: A Magazine of Noir and Crimefactory. He is working on his first novel, and he is co-editor of Lost Children: A Charity Anthology. His home on the web is www.pluckyoutoo.com
VENUS IN FURS
By
Matthew C. Funk
‘You’re worthless,’ she said, and I felt better than I had my whole life.
This was long before I found myself with a 12-gauge under my jaw, about to pull the trigger.
This was the night I met Brittany—that edgeless evening of doing blow in Pirate’s Alley, greeting the brown char of Mississippi River sunrise with pink champagne in plastic cups.
I’d chased Brittany that night. First with my eyes across the thrash of Razoo’s dance floor. Then into the ladies’ room, where all my best lines fell off her icy expression like cast-off cookie fortunes. Then all the way to the parking garage off Iberville, pressing her against her Nissan Sentra.
I tore her knockoff blouse. I bit her just under the Wonderbra. My smile was hungry for her to beg ‘No.’
That smile withered under her silence and stare.
Then I was the one wanting to beg. To scream her down. To win a reaction from her however I had to.
Then she said something that didn’t just send me to my knees. It made me ache to go.
‘You’re worthless,’ Brittany said. Plain as an X on a dotted line.
Then I knew that nobody would know me as well as she did. I knew that I never wanted anything more than I wanted that.
Nothing mattered more than wanting her.
Brittany didn’t just drive me to my knees and then leave me stuck in that Irish Channel barroom with a gun under my brains and a case of stolen coke in her manicured hand. There was more romance to it.
Once she was done collecting my shaking head and my sorries in her hand that first night, we partied down the stars in worthy New Orleans fashion.
I told you about the blow and the champagne. The next night was petty theft on Canal Street, pinching pretty from jewelry stores and tourist traps. Then came weeks with her tailing me on my work—rolling drunks and leaning on fresh-off-the-boat store owners for protection cash.
Every night, Brittany and I would celebrate my successful career as professional muscle by getting trashed in my Treme flophouse. But it was the bruises I woke up with every morning that made it worth it.
Those bruises taught me what I’d starved all my life to learn:
Delivering a beating doesn’t make you a man. Taking a beating does.
You don’t unlearn those lessons. I didn’t stick my chest out, walking my route with her to snatch my protection money, because I was the Monster of Magazine Street.
I stuck it out because of the wax burns on it.
That kind of love doesn’t fade.
Razor cuts on your thighs linger better than lines in a love letter. Burst capillaries in your scrotum stay longer than lipstick around your cock. Whip strikes are a deeper sacrifice than wedding vows.
They mean something. That kind of love means something.
It takes a real man to get it up after his lover’s ground her heels into his balls.
Spend a month suffering like that, getting up to mount her after that, blessed with her kisses on your black-and-blues, and try to go back.
There’s no going back.
There’s only going deeper.
There’s only giving more.
And when Brittany told me to give her what she always wanted—a bona fide, Bonnie and Clyde style heist—who was I to say no?
A real man just asks when and where.
So when and where ended up being O’Malley’s in the Irish Channel, on a piss-bath of a night in August.
What Brittany wanted was for us to grab the drop-off of Fudd Racine, a Ninth Ward coke baron who got his monthly pick-ups from Jamaica by way of O’Malley’s basement.
How Brittany wanted it was old-school strong arm, with me knocking in the door with a shotgun, pushing the Jamaicans into a closet and then getting with the grab-and-go.
Why she wanted it was because she needed to know I loved her.
If you think I flinched from that for one second, you’ve never known how good it felt to take a beautiful woman’s body after she’s broken yours with her flogger.
I didn’t kick my way into O’Malley’s just because Brittany told me to prove it. I kicked that door and stuck up those Yo’s because I wanted to prove it to myself.
It was all going so good:
Four Bob Marley imitators shut in the back freezer. Brittany in my shadow, sharing Blue Label with me. It didn’t even take a credit card to slip the basement lock.
I opened it with the same shoulder she’d branded with her initials.
We danced down those steps as bubbly as our pink champagne.
We traced our nails over the snakeskin of the coke-stuffed suitcase.
We cracked it open just as Fudd Racine decided to roll in early.
Shooting myself was Brittany’s idea. I admit to second thoughts.
‘You’ll be giving yourself entirely to me,’ her lips on my cheek rushed, just sand under the tide of Fudd’s boys laughing from the cars outside.
‘I can blast all these fucks to hamburger,’ I said.
‘What if you fail?’
‘I won’t.’
‘What if you do?’ Then she gave me those eyes. Her Hope Diamond eyes: Blue and immaculately empty and as distant as behind museum glass. �
��They’ll get me.’
‘I won’t let them.’
‘So don’t,’ Brittany said, already moving for the back door. Her touch left me but the archive its marks remained. ‘Stall them with some shots, then do yourself. Then they can’t torture you into giving me up.’
As she slid out the back and the voices out front boomed closer, I wanted to insist to her that I wouldn’t give her up. I wouldn’t fail. But I knew I couldn’t be sure.
Only her words made me sure.
Brittany blew a kiss and then blew out the back door.
I put a round through O’Malley’s front door toward the sound of keys at the broken lock.
I put the smoking barrel under my jaw and put it in my head that I was going to blow my own brains out.
I took one last look toward where she went.
What I saw broke me worse than Brittany’s whip or Fudd Racine’s wirecutters could have.
Brittany taught me true: It takes a real man to be broken and to rise back up.
Everything else she told me was a lie.
She wasn’t flawless. She’d cased O’Malley’s, but forgot to notice a window looking out on the back alley.
She wasn’t looking for me to be her man. She had a lanky mulatto, straight out of the Mulholland Projects, waiting in the back alley to take that snakeskin suitcase.
She wasn’t in love with me.
She knelt to him.
I didn’t need to see those Hope Diamond eyes, pressed to his baggy black jeans’ crotch, to know Brittany was feeling the kind of bliss I thought only I knew.
I knew then that it didn’t take bruises to mark a person as owned. His hands on her neck, lifting her up and whisking her away, taught me that much.
The beating I took from Fudd Racine and his Ninth Ward bangers was all for Brittany:
The blacked eyes. The four cracked ribs. The shattered knee. All for her.
I took that beating determined to get back up. I took it right on the nose so that they wouldn’t break my jaw. I took it smiling that old hungry smile.
I took it so that when I got back up, I could give her up.
I give half my protection money to Fudd now. I give meat-shield time to his crew whenever they’re rolling west of Armstrong Park.
And, yeah, I give Brittany a thought from time to time. The scars still scrawl from my chest to my knees, still pink as ever.
They remind me that there are women in this world who can only be your tyrant or your servant.
Brittany’s man, Silas, gave her over to Fudd so he could keep the coke money.
Fudd tossed what was left Brittany to the bayou.
She lives on in me as an agony. She’s a hunger that won’t be fed again. And she’s a reminder that no matter the agony, a real man gets up.
BIO: Matthew C. Funk is a social media consultant, professional marketing copywriter and writing mentor. He is an editor of Needle Magazine, editor of the Genre section of the critically acclaimed zine, FictionDaily, and a staff writer for Planet Fury and Spinetingler Magazine. Winner of the 2010 Spinetingler Award for Best Short Story on the Web, Funk has work featured at numerous sites indexed on his Web domain and printed in Needle, Speedloader, Pulp Ink and D*CKED.
DOCK OF THE BAY
By
R Thomas Brown
The waves lost ground to the ebbing tide, revealing stones and shells dredged up from the creek to replenish the beach. The recent hurricane left houses intact, but left boats stranded, took away the beach, boats and a few lives. It didn’t take James Hawkins’ life away. He tossed that as soon as he moved to Long Island.
Hawkins gazed out at the Peconic Bay, feet hanging over the boat dock at the end of Freeport Street. His cottage was just down the road, across the street. Couldn’t afford bayside property, even when he was flush. Now, he couldn’t afford the year-round across the street either. Next month, they’d foreclose.
They.
Used to be we. He’d foreclosed on thousands of homes over the past three years. Economy turned down, payments stopped coming in and the bank tightened policies. A job developing a new personal line of credit from a corner office vanished and became a challenge to find ways to process foreclosures quickly with minimal staff while squeezed into a postage stamp cubicle.
He played with the knife in his hands, smoothing the side with his gloved fingers, as he thought about what used to be. He’d left Texas, and a pleasant job at a small bank, after a trip out to the bay. He loved the view. The mild summer. All of it. Took the first job he could find that would get him out there. Them out there. He and Pam.
Pam.
They’d met in college. Didn’t get along well. She’d set fire to his kitchen while cooking for some other guy. But, time passed, they met again and hit it off. Married after three dates and together ten years when they moved out. She was all for it.
The tip of the knife pricked his finger when he heard voice behind him. Too soon. Can’t be him. He turned around to see two men getting ready to launch a small boat. Unexpected, but could be useful. He slipped the knife back into his pocket and shuffled over.
‘Hey guys.’
‘Hey, how are ya?’
‘Good. Just watchin’ the boats.’ Hawkins shifted his weight.
‘Yeah? You live down the street, right?’
‘Yep.’ Recognition would help later. ‘Just wondered down here.’
The two men finished their work and started the engine. ‘Well, take it easy. You wanna go out for a ride one day, just let me know.’
Hawkins nodded and smiled and the two men were off.
A fake smile. Like all his smiles for the past two months. His boss, Gary, pressed them hard. Get the paperwork done. But it was never enough. He started to cut corners. Hawkins did all his work, but he was falling behind. When the bank was caught not reviewing all the work, Hawkins took the fall.
His file said it all. Poor performance. Not meeting quotas. Disciplinary action for poor productivity and anger in the office. Everyone believed he had started cutting the corners to get his volumes up. And, like magic, his numbers for that month looked great. Not that he had done the work.
He was fired. And sued by the bank. When he got home, Pam was gone. A note said she needed some time and that he should pick up his stuff over the weekend before she got back. He didn’t blame her, he’d been tough to live with. He’d felt he was caught in a slow death and it wore on them both.
That day, it felt like the reaper was in a rush to get job done. That’s when he’d bought the knife. He’d have to wait for a gun, but he got the knife the same day. He wanted to end it all. Take his own life. But he couldn’t do it.
It seemed senseless. And he couldn’t do that to Pam. Couldn’t cause her the pain. She may have left, but he still held out hope that he could turn it around. So he struggled on. Little jobs here and there to make the mortgage. And the cottage payments. That’s why he brought them out there. He couldn’t let it go.
It meant more to him than the house. The one Pam picked out. The one on the cul de sac. The one with the new floors. The one with the professional kitchen. The one he couldn’t really afford. The one where he found Pam and Gary naked when he came back to pick up his stuff.
He wanted to beat Gary to a pulp right there. He didn’t. Wanted to barge in and curse Pam for the betrayal. He didn’t. He always avoided conflict. But he was angry.
He thought about the knife. He wanted to end it, but that would do noting now to quell the rage. He had a plan to solve all his problems. He started revealing embarrassing things about Pam. Past arrests. Pictures. Videos. The kinds of things you learn and have after a decade of marital bliss. He’d left them at the office, along with images of Gary and Pam together.
They called. Made threats. Hawkins ignored them. He had a plan. He stopped paying his mortgage on the cottage. He knew Gary wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation. He signed the papers himself. Hawkins kept a copy. Kept it with the recordings of all the threate
ning phone calls.
He glanced at his watch. Six. He noticed the sky getting dark. Heard a car door slam. Gary couldn’t resist the chance to stop all the madness. Hawkins knew he’d be there. He felt the knife. Took a breath. He was ready. Heard the boat coming back to the dock. An added bonus.
Gary appeared on the dock. Angry. ‘What the fuck do you want?’
Hawkins gripped the knife while staring out at the bay. ‘Thought we’d end all this once and for all.’
‘Fine with me. As long as that means you’ll leave us the hell alone.’
The boat docked. Gary looked over, but turned back to Hawkins.
Hawkins grinned, squeezing the knife handle and positioning it under his shirt before turning around. ‘You think you can come out here and threaten me?’ He made sure the two men still on the boat could hear.
‘I’ve had enough of the pictures. The videos. The late night calls. It ends now.’
Hawkins noticed the two men walking toward them . He stepped up right in front of Gary. ‘Yes, it’s all over, Gary,’ he whispered.
He took the knife. Ran it into his stomach and carved across. Feeling weak he shoved the knife into Gary’s hand, spitting blood as he struggled to stay on his feet.
‘What the fuck?’
Hawkins couldn’t tell if that was the neighbors or Gary. It didn’t matter. The world grew hazy. Unreal. Shapes twisted and warped like a Dali painting. He saw the knife fall, and Gary being knocked to the ground. Faces hovered over his, but they seemed alternately angelic and monstrous.
He looked away. At the end of the dock, he saw the boat. Sounds faded, and his vision narrowed. All he could see what the name. In blood red letters.
Bittersweet.
BIO: R Thomas Brown writes and reads crime fiction and some horror. His stories are around the internet and kindle store and his reviews are around as well. He can be found at Spinetingler, Crime Fiction Lover, and his blog rthomasbrown.blogspot.com In early 2012 he has a book coming out, titled ‘Hill Country’, from Snubnose Press. He's pretty excited about that. His wife and three kids are too.
