Hard Bite and Other Short Stories

by Anonymous-9

  After my introductory torture by fire, they informed me that whatever crime I’d committed at TOD (Time of Death) was what I would labor at day in, day out for eternity. That’s how I got assigned to Family Homicide.

  Jogging down the corridor, I passed endless rooms crammed with pale men hunched over desks, piled high with paperwork. Files of death certificates, arrest warrants, stays of execution—confetti that showers individuals wedded to crime—were piled on desks, tables, chairs, the floor, choking every inch of elbow room. Paperwork was crucial to verify our sometimes fallible surveillance and intelligence. It was excruciatingly boring work, usually reserved for cop killers, and as I chugged down the hall, a swarm of hornets materialized around a man falling asleep at his desk. One moment his lids were drooping closed and the next his eyes bulged at a cloud of angry buzzing overhead.

  “I’m awake! I’m awake!” he screeched. Too late, the hornets dove, stinging his eyes, face and every pore of exposed skin. The office door slammed shut, blanking out his cries for help.

  I barely noticed. The urge for sleep was unending, and some fresh horror always materialized to thwart it. That’s Hades for you.

  I sprinted the last few yards of steel corridor to the End Room, where we conducted End Days as a unit. The room was kept in cool, semi-darkness, with dozens of monitors showing our target at home alone, losing control of his own mind as we silently invaded—it could take years to work up an End Day.

  Selling a mortal on murder takes skill, and it takes particular finesse to sell one on the murder of a family member—blood being thicker than water and all that. Family homicide required a lot more boundary-busting than say, the murder of a friend. It’s easy getting a mortal to randomly kill someone they don’t know. But terminating a person they’ve known since birth...well let’s just say humans need help with it—and that’s where someone, excuse me, something like me steps in.

  “Hi guys, how we doing?”

  My unit looked up from various tasks with the weary hatred that meant business as usual. Horton was at the command console, whispering into his headset, keeping up a steady chatter, beaming straight into the target’s mind.

  “C’mon do it. What are you a pussy? Life is shit. You know you want to...”

  I gave Horton a thumbs up and leaned in to get a better view.

  His name was Arlitz. Ian Arlitz. Wife and daughter the lights of his life. He had a so-so career heading up customer service departments and now the departments were dissolving—and rematerializing in India. Arlitz couldn’t see his future, so he thought there wasn’t any.

  “This isn’t right, this isn’t right,” his thoughts were saying.

  “There’s nothing ahead of you. Might as well end it and take the family with,” Horton answered.

  Natural Born Killers flickered silently on Arlitz’ flat screen, while Marilyn Manson sucked any hope out of the air. Horton had covered all the bases in terms of getting him past the usual mortal inhibitions.

  “Maybe it’s for the best.”

  “Yessss. She’ll be home soon, why drag this out any longer?”

  Everyone in the End Room electrified at the sound of Arlitz’ front door opening. We heard a distant, “Honey, I’m home,” coupled with, “Hi Daddyyyyy.”

  “Do it, now’s the time. Do the right thing,” Horton whispered.

  Arlitz put down the remote and picked up his .45-caliber. He was icy calm, a good sign. Checked the chamber—loaded—and snapped it back in place. He pointed it at the door pretending to feel a shot recoil, and then placed the muzzle in his mouth, pantomiming another shot. When he lowered the gun, it accidently nudged the remote, and the music switched—to Frank Sinatra.

  My crew did a collective and silent, “Ohhhh shiiiittttt.” I signaled everybody to keep cool. No problem. Temporary delay. We could still get him back on track.

  At first it was kind of a joke. Frank sang Strangers In the Night—a song of transient, meaningless sex if you listen only to the chorus—so the mood was still on course. After that initial shocked and frozen moment in the End Room, snickers all around. Then came Fly Me to the Moon, which can have slightly suicidal undertones if one is sufficiently depressed. We were used to frequent pauses during an M-N-S, and so far this was nothing out of the routine.

  “Ready. Aim.” urged Horton.

  Arlitz raised the .45 as a pair of footsteps pattered down the hall...

  I indulged myself in the music, happy to let it play. I’d enjoyed Sinatra a very long time ago, and this was a tiny moment of escapism snatched from the jaws of an impending, senseless death in the stupefying march of senseless deaths that made up my waking hours. As I’ve already mentioned, there are no sleeping hours in Hades.

  In that tranquil, stolen pause, That’s Life began to play. Right away, things skewed, because the song is about rolling with punches and taking a philosophical perspective when things go wrong. Every verse has humor, wisdom and a little self-deprecation—instant buzz kill at an M-N-S. I yelled to Horton, “Put on Reservoir Dogs!” but it was too late. Arlitz’ gun hand began to waver. We could tell from the expression on his face that a ray of light had penetrated his darkness, disturbing the perfect landscape of despair we’d so artfully painted. Arlitz jumped to his feet, swatting himself in the head repeatedly. Our brain-tap sputtered and died. All we saw was Arlitz dumping shells out of the gun as his little girl burst in. By the time his wife entered, smiling, even our room surveillance fizzled. Six months of work shot to shit.

  Every so often, a job goes bad, so at first it was no tragedy, even though hell had to be paid, of course. All of us were stricken with a plague of invisible lice that had us leaping and scratching, tearing at our flesh. Now and then a dwarf would dash in and stab one of us in the guts, mid-conversation. But eventually, the price was paid, and Arlitz was old news.

  A year later though, he came howling back like a freshly roasted inductee. First wind of it came when Satan dropped by and slammed a book down in front of me. (If you thought he sat on a dark throne in the bowels of Hell, intoning in a basso profundo, it’s not like that; he’s a hands-on kind of guy.)

  “Have you seen this?” he barked.

  Of course he knew I hadn’t seen it, there are no books in hell. I squinted at the title: Triumphing Evil by Ian Arlitz. A non-committal wheeze exited my larynx starting with ahhh and ending in ummm.

  “Imbecile! This is a how-to manual for potential murder-suicides to screw up demonic possession through the power of positive thinking!”

  The book flew up and knocked me in the jaw before bursting into flame. As ashes drifted to the floor, Satan screamed in my face what I already knew—our numbers were down; demonic takeovers were at an all-time low, especially around New York, usually rich territory, where Arlitz was counseling and inspiring the mentally ill and chronically depressed. As a result, Family Homicide registered record-lows, and news had reached the top. Horton and I were in deep shit.

  “I just don’t understand,” Satan spat as he stomped out the door, “how somebody as talented as you could bungle something as important as this.”

  Horton waited for his chance to speak with me alone, and found it at the urinal. He whispered so softly, the trickle of pee almost covered what he was saying. “All the guys wanna know—you’re so evil, so well-qualified, you shoulda known Frank Sinatra was a bad influence. But you let the poison play. You tapped your pen along to it! It just don’t add up Chief...” His eyes were pleading. What a relief to see an expression other than bored hatred.

  “The truth...I shouldn’t be Chief of Family Homicide.”

  “Whaa?”

  I raised my voice a little. Maybe I was past caring. “You heard I shot my fiancée and had sex with her corpse before blowing my brains out, right?”

  “A classic M-N-S, no coaching necessary. That’s how you qualified, Chief.”

  “No, no, the acting medical examiner miscalculated—he was hung-over and filling in for the regular guy. M-N-S went down o
n the examiner’s report. But it wasn’t, not really.” I spilled my secrets as Horton stood there dumbfounded, zipper still down. The real story was, after carelessly showing off with a firearm, I fatally wounded the love of my life—an accident, a terrible one. I called 911 as she gently bathed me in her blood, wanting to say, ‘I love you’ and ‘I’m sorry.’ But being an arrogant man, completely blocked in my emotional expression, the only way of expressing my love was through sex. So I made love to her, weeping in anguish, as she bled out. She forgave me with the slightest nod and breathed, ‘It’s okay,’ as the whites of her eyes rolled up. I blew my head off as emergency rescue pounded down the door.”

  Horton stuttered, “Y-You didn’t, it w-wasn’t...”

  “They never checked, Horton. The autopsy report arrived before I did, and the hierarchy was so dazzled with my primo badass paperwork the greedy bastards couldn’t wait. They bulldozed verification and instantly made me Grand Chief Demon of Family Homicide. It was bound to go bad.” Horton looked at me like he’d just pissed on his own pant leg. Heavy footsteps sounded in the hall. I’d heard footsteps like those before. They belonged to the pitchfork fiends outside. They were coming for me.

  “Jayzus Jumpin’ Kee-rist,” Horton muttered.

  An explosion of sparks and smoke extinguished everything. Somewhere beyond the black, a cracked bell tolled.

  When consciousness returned, I was lashed to a stake at the top of a huge, as-yet-unlit bonfire. The sky above, clotting rapidly with bruised clouds, offered no hope. Behind me, Horton shrieked, “I’m not an accomplice!” as unseen hands roped him to my back. Below, a slavering mob yowled as Satan recited a laundry list of my transgressions.

  Grinning, gibbering inductees, fresh from their own fires, rushed up to the pyre and set us alight with their burning limbs. It was clear; there wasn’t going to be any reviving this time around. As searing flares rose around us, and our screams wafted away in smoky puffs, I whispered with my last breath, “Horton, I can’t be a hundred percent sure, but Sinatra might’ve been on to something.” †

  NOTES & QUOTES

  Hard Bite

  I don’t remember where or when I came up with the idea for “Hard Bite”, the story that won Spinetingler’s Best Short Story on the Web, 2009. I just picked up a pen one day and the main character’s voice came through and I started scribbling. It took a lot of work, a lot of drafts and I couldn’t figure out the right ending until I sent it to Glenn Gray, a fellow “weird” story writer, and he suggested ending it on some dialogue. So I did.

  David Cranmer and his wife Denise Mix had just started “Beat to a Pulp”, the short story webzine, and David was looking for stories. I offered him “Hard Bite” and it was the third or fourth story published. Nearly a year later, I almost passed out on the floor when David sent an e-mail saying “Hard Bite” had been nominated for Spinetingler’s annual “best of” contest. I remember Brian Lindenmuth saying there was heavy competition in the voting between Sandra Seamans and myself. Sandra’s story was “Cold Rift.” “Hard Bite” won by a hair.

  Hard Bite the novel is a work-in-progress, and will be issued as an e-book in 2012.

  HARD BITE is nasty and brutish. Just the way you gotta love ‘em.

  --Charles Gramlich, Write with Fire

  “Nasty, but a beating heart underneath. [HARD BITE is] very clever; lovely writing.”

  --Patti Abbott, winner Derringer Award, 2008

  Your style reminds me a little of Vicki Hendricks' work, but with a voice of its own. I see you're expanding "Hard Bite" into a novel. It won't be like anything else out there, and that's not something you can say about most novels.

  --James Reasoner, Author, 40 published novels

  “Hard Bite” is phenomenal.

  --Kristen Weber, Developmental Editor, former senior editor, Penguin

  It’s not that difficult, really, to shock a reader. Too many self-styled noirists rely on the curdled note, the wince of revulsion – easy enough to accomplish in an opening line or scene – and never bother to develop their characters enough to make us care. Anonymous-9 does her due diligence: her prose eviscerates and then sticks around to consider the tableau. Her characters are layered and complex, and even at their most horrifying, they smack of humanity and humor and even compassion.

  “I like to kill people,” Hard Bite begins, and we don’t doubt it’s true. But by the end of the story your heart aches a little for the narrator. That’s the true goal of fiction, or it ought to be – to shift you on your foundations in the reading, leaving you off in a slightly different place from where you started.

  --Sophie Littlefield, A Bad Day for Sorry & A Bad Day for Pretty

  Tequila Spike

  “Tequila Spike” was my first short story written in 2007 and it sat in a short-story zine’s e-mail box with no acknowledgement for 6 months until Glenn Gray told me to send it somewhere else. I was terrified it was no good. Todd Robinson picked it up and published it in Issue #21 of Thuglit. The story just says it’s by Anonymous, and the cover has no hyphen between Anonymous and 9. I think “Tequila Spike” is the story closest to my heart.

  Claw Marks

  The idea came to me while I was sitting in the car outside a restaurant in Long Beach, CA, waiting for a friend. I scribbled it on a used envelope and polished it over the course of a week. Christopher Grant from A Twist of Noir published it and then nominated it for a Derringer in 2008.

  Anonymous-9 knows her stuff. Who else can have you hanging on the edge of your seat with a tale (or perhaps that should be tail) of murder told from the POV of a cat?”

  --Christopher Grant, Editor/Publisher of A Twist Of Noir

  Organic Chicken Tortilla Soup with Chopped Finger Garnish

  Originally published at DZ Allen’s Muzzleflash; when that site went down there was no longer any evidence of the story. So I sent it to Aldo Calcagno who accepted it for Powder Burn Flash and then nominated it for a Derringer Award in 2009. Bless you, Aldo.

  Killer Orgasm

  Cindy Crosmus, the long-time editor of Yellow Mama, and one of the foundational short-story publishers of the Internet, picked this story up and wrote me an encouraging note. I gained a lot of confidence as a result. It was published with original artwork by Gin E. L. Fenton. Thank you, Gin, your art perfectly captured the story.

  I actually lost a friend over this story. I met a gold dealer who bought some jewelry from me when I was short on the rent. He told me to meet him in an alley in Santa Monica and actually brought a little electronic scale with him. He was very polite and trustworthy, weighed my gold, paid me cash and that was that. We remained email pals and one day I sent him the link to this story and he emailed back and said it was weird. Next thing I knew, I was off his email list and never heard from him again. It wasn’t the first time my fiction scared somebody. Probably won’t be the last.

  “When you read “Killer Orgasm” you realize 1) the writer is wicked, and 2) she had a blast writing it. This story writes itself; it’s brilliant. A-9 knows these smug wives well, and their miserable husbands better. Who deserves these men more than this twelve-time ‘other woman,’ who carries poison in her bag the way some chicks would a sewing kit?”

  --Cindy Crosmus, Editor , Yellow Mama

  Eating the Deficit

  My attempt at political satire written in early 2010. If it ends up really happening I guess it won’t be satire anymore.

  The Master Bedroom

  This story was originally a nightmare and took nearly two years and 150 drafts to covert to story form. It could possibly use another 150, but you have to stop somewhere. It was inspired by Ghosts, a play written by Henrik Ibsen in 1881. What I remember about it most vividly is my university English Lit prof quotng, “The sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons.”

  Matthew Funk wrote the best review for which I’ll be forever grateful. He said, “Everything about the prose locks us in his mind: The structure swings from the stark to the juvenile and poetic.
The diction is culled right from Ozzy’s vocabulary—a language of fables and hate crimes. The plot progression is a haunting series of hallucinatory passages that gives us no escape from his delirium.” Thanks Matt.

  M-N-S (n) murder-necrophilia-suicide

  Anthony Neil Smith took it and requested a few judicious changes that helped tremendously. He published it in Issue # 5 of Plots with Guns and it got me nominated for the second year in a row for Spinetingler’s Best Short Story on the Web. A judging panel from the International Thriller Writers selected the story as a first-round nominee for a Thriller Award. The fact that a major writing organization would give the time of day to a speck-of-dust online writer like me speaks volumes about their integrity and openness to new talent. With all gratitude, my thanks to the ITW.

  Five out of five stars

  M-N-S (n) nurder-necrophilia-suicide—the central conceit is a division of Hell that runs off of the conventions of a police story. Trust me when I say a summary doesn’t do it justice. From the name of the division to the paperwork necessary to fill out how to get a tap on a person’s mind, this is an insanely inventive and one hell of a well told story. The winner of the issue far and away. There is a novel’s worth of ideas here and I wish there was one so I could go and buy it now. Anonymous-9 is one hell of a drug.